It was meant to be a new beginning. Just two days before 16-year-old Christopher Brown was due to start a programme aimed at turning his life around, he was shot dead outside a friend’s house in the early hours of a Sunday morning.
That was in Gulfport, Mississippi, on 10 June 2024 – a day marred by four separate shootings in just 24 hours. A year later, his murder remains unsolved, with no arrests and no solid leads. But his mother, Ousavine Brown, is refusing to let her son’s death slip into the shadows.
“I think the community has this street code to where, if I see it, I’m not going to tell it, because I’m scared of what’s going to happen,” she told WLOX News. “If we’re going to take this community back, we’re going to have to stand.”
Chris was her eldest child, a tall lad who loved basketball, joking around with mates, and was a regular at the church youth group. But like many teens caught in the crossfire of life on the edge, he’d started hanging with the wrong crowd. Ousavine saw the signs early and tried to act.
When her son refused to cut ties with certain friends, she enrolled him in a troubled youth programme at Camp Shelby. He was supposed to leave the following Monday. But he never made it.
Two days before, she’d gone round to the house where Chris often stayed, this time with police in tow. She begged the parents to stop letting her son stay over. “I told my son to stay away,” she recalled.
But Chris didn’t listen. On Saturday, he was back at that house. Ousavine didn’t intervene this time, thinking: Monday would be the turning point.
Then came the knock at the door. In the middle of the night, her daughter answered it. A neighbour from around the corner stood there, panic in her voice: “Chris has been shot.”
Ousavine ran straight over. Flashing lights. Police tape. Her son lay on the porch, paramedics surrounding him. He was rushed to the hospital. “They locked the hospital down and asked me to sit in the chapel. At that time, it set in. My baby was gone.”
Chris had been shot in the chest and died in the hospital. What happened that night remains unclear. Police have said little, and the only story Ousavine was given was that Chris had been taking the bins out when someone drove by and opened fire.
But she doesn’t buy it.
“I don’t,” she told reporter Noah Noble. She believes Chris and his mates had possibly robbed someone, and the shooting may have been payback.
“Either those people came back for what was theirs and my son was accidentally shot, or someone there murdered my child,” she said.
One year on, no arrests. No justice. But Ousavine isn’t staying silent.
“If we’re going to take this community back, it’s going to take a force. It’s going to take all of us, not just some of us. We as parents can’t expect the police department, city officials to do anything if we’re doing nothing. If we want it to change, we have to make it change.”
Chris’s story is tragically far from unique. Across the US, youth gun violence continues to surge, and families like the Browns are left grieving in silence.
But this mum won’t let her son’s name be forgotten.