A mother had three minutes to address her son’s killer

The night before Adriana Vance addressed her son’s killer in a Colorado courtroom, she was still searching for the right words.

She had struggled for days to write a statement about her son, Raymond Green Vance, 22, one of five people killed in a shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs last November. She wanted to say how sweet and easygoing he had been. How Raymond’s little brother dangled from his colossal six-foot frame like it was a climbing frame. How Raymond’s friends at the funeral wouldn’t let go of his coffin. How Mrs. Vance felt there was no justice.

“I have to say something,” she said Sunday evening. “I – right now, I don’t know what.”

Every day in courtrooms across the country, victims of violence stand up, turn to the accused, and express their life-changing fear and loss. These victim impact statements are designed to give grieving families and survivors their moment in court before sentencing. And the latest era of mass shootings has given new resonance to this ritual of the American justice system.

Because most mass shooters don’t live to see a trial, there is often no moment after their attacks. But if the killer survives, as in the Club Q attacks, at a high school in Parkland, Fla., and at a synagogue in Pittsburgh – the question of whether to speak and what to say can be very fraught. Should those minutes be spent focusing on lost loved ones, or convicting the killer, or even offering forgiveness, as families did after a racist massacre at a Charleston church?

The courtroom is often filled with reporters and cameras, and victims say they feel the burden of speaking not only for themselves and the memory of their loved ones, but for others whose lives have been torn apart by mass shootings.

In Colorado Springs, the 23-year-old assailant pleaded guilty to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder on Monday. The survivors and the victims’ families each had three minutes to confront the gunman. There were many victims to hear of, and only so much time, the judge said.

How do you distill someone’s life and death into the space of a commercial break? For Mrs. Vance and other families, it felt like an important—and impossible—task.

“There are no words for it,” she said the day before speaking in court. “That is not possible.”

Sabrina Aston, the mother of Daniel Aston, another of the Club Q victims, wrote down a few thoughts over the weekend as she and her husband, Jeff, flew home from Pride parties in Tulsa. They receive invitations to many LGBTQ events in honor of Daniel, a transgender bartender at Club Q who was killed at the age of 28 when the defendant shot into the club just before midnight on November 19.

“We’ve been discussing this in our heads for months, you know – what I’d say to him,” Ms Aston said, referring to the gunman.

The night before the hearing, the Astons had drinks on their patio in Colorado Springs, remembered little things about Daniel, and considered whether to give their statements themselves or have them read on their behalf by a lawyer or family representative.

An aunt of Derrick Rump, a murdered Club Q bartender, stopped to utter a few words in her courtroom speech. “I can’t,” she said in a breaking voice. She played a voice recording of Mr. Rump’s cousin.

The Astons decided to address the defendant in court. “I wanted to face him and tell him how he hurt us,” Ms Aston said. The defendant identifies as non-binary and uses she/them pronouns, but many of the victims and victims’ relatives dismiss those preferences as an attempt to gain clemency.

When it was the Astons’ turn to speak, they walked together to a lectern a few feet from where the shooter sat in the packed courtroom.

Mr. Aston spoke of his son’s easy laughter and “burning blue eyes.” Mrs. Aston said to the killer in a trembling voice, “Your actions were brutal, full of hatred and cowardly.” She said she didn’t believe the shooter was remorseful and made it a point to say she didn’t forgive. The Astons did not look at the shooter, although Mr. Aston said afterwards that he wished he had addressed the defendant more directly.

On Sunday night, Ms Vance, 42, put her 9-year-old son Marcus to bed and sat down again with her notepad and pen. This time her anger erupted – a flurry of swear words berating the shooter, calling them bad and saying they didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as the survivors and the victims’ families.

She put down what she had written, put down her pen and tried to sleep.

“They weren’t good words,” Mrs. Vance said. “He wanted to destroy lives and families and create chaos. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing my pain. I started thinking, I just need to make it more about Raymond.

She woke up with a start around 2 a.m. and paced her house, thinking about the morning in court and about her sons.

When Mrs. Vance and her family talked about Raymond, the stories poured out. He was a gentle giant with a wild crown of hair and a bottomless appetite for sushi and his grandmother Esthela’s tacos. He had recently started working at FedEx. He liked playing Call of Duty; he loved his Rottweiler, Draco, and his girlfriend, Kassandra Fierro.

Raymond had gone to Club Q with Mrs. Fierro and her family that night to celebrate the birthday of a friend who was a transvestite at the club, Mrs. Vance said.

As she prepared to go to court, the paper was still blank. Mrs. Vance put on a black T-shirt with Raymond’s picture on it, dropped Marcus off with a sitter, and headed for the courthouse. Her mom and dad suggested a few rules to get her started, urging Mrs. Vance not to give her three minutes for the shooter.

When it was her turn, she stood by the microphone crying, then took a few deep breaths and slowly read the lines she’d just typed into her phone.

“Raymond was 22 years old, a kind, loving, gentle man who touched the hearts of many people,” she said. “He was always there for his family and his friends. He was there for people he didn’t even know. He never harmed a soul.”

She pointed out that it had taken less than five minutes for the shooter to destroy so many lives. She told them all to find a way of life, but she believed the shooter “doesn’t deserve to see another sunrise or sunset.”

“That’s all I have to say.”

Kelly Manley reporting contributed.