Xavier Usanga

“He was far too good for this whole earth.”
Streams of black and white cars whiz past as mother Dawn Usanga vividly recounts fond memories, sitting sideways on a bench in front of a street only two blocks away from where tragedy occurred. She waved to drivers who honked a hello of familiarity and ruffled the black and scarlett fur of a stray dog as he joyfully greeted her.
Heading to Hyde Park, neighbors initiate everyday conversations with Usanga, catching up on recent events. This is an area she knows. This is her home. And yet, in this same neighborhood, her child was stolen from her.
Usanga knew that Xavier was a gift from the beginning.
“He was born at two-and-a half pounds. They said that he couldn’t breastfeed, that he was going to be on breathing machines for weeks, and they didn’t know how long he was going to be in the hospital. From the beginning of his life, he beat the odds. He was off the machines in five hours, he was breastfeeding in 24 [hours],” Usanga said.
Xavier’s persevering attitude continued to grow with him, as he flourished into a bright little boy.
“He was on my hip forever,” Usanga said. “He always smiled and he lit up people’s faces in this community. He wouldn’t talk a whole lot, but he was always smiling and always polite. Everybody was just so attracted to him. He could make anyone smile in any of the worst situations.”
Despite being quiet, Xavier’s cheerful exuberance made his tricks unmistakable when it came to games. While playing hide-and-seek, he would constantly give himself away by giggling too loudly. If he thought that he’d hidden too long and scared his mom, he would laugh, give her a big hug, and say, “Sorry I scared you!”
Xavier’s playful antics continued in the form of games of Uno, during which he attempted to show Usanga the strategies that he learned from his sisters. On one particular night, he sat down with her to show her the best ways to cheat.
“He said ‘Okay, mom. You know the rules, you know how to play, right?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Okay, well, this is how Angel cheats and this is how Trinity cheats, and this is how I cheat.’ So we started playing and he told me that he takes cards sometimes and sticks them under his leg or sticks them behind him. So I would catch him and he said ‘I knew you’d catch me.’ He would be so funny,” Usanga said.
The following day, his life would end.
August 12th will be eternally ingrained in the mind of the Usanga family. Dawn Usanga was out buying groceries at the store around the corner. Xavier and his two sisters, Angel and Trinity, were together playing games at their neighbors’ house.
“It was really strange,” Usanga said. “I was sitting at the corner store and I saw this guy walking out to the store with a bulletproof vest on. He looked at me as he walked down the street and I was sitting in the truck. I asked [my friend] ‘Is that really a bulletproof vest? What is he doing walking around with that?’”
Minutes later, Usanga heard the rapid ringing of shots echoing down her street.
“I was like, ‘Thank God that my kids are at the neighbor’s house and they’re inside and they’re safe.’ And so we pulled around the block and went back to the house and that’s when people were flagging me down and screaming that: ‘the boy had been shot,’” Usanga said.
Xavier, Angel and Trinity were walking back to their home, intending to grab an item they had forgotten, when they heard the bullets being fired.
“They were crossing over the alley into our backyard when they just got flooded with bullets. They all hit the ground when they heard them go off and when the girls got back up to run, they looked back up and they saw that Xavier wasn’t getting up. Trinity had grabbed him and reached around, and she was trying to stop the bleeding that was coming from his throat. She has a very vivid recollection of it. His eyes were fluttering and she was holding him, and she thought that he was trying to talk, and she was trying to help him [with] breathing. My other daughter was trying to perform CPR on him and that’s when our neighbors ran out to the yard and grabbed him and took him in,” Usanga said.
Xavier passed away shortly after. Guilt now plagues Usanga’s daughters, as they try to figure out how they could have prevented this from happening, or wish that they had been hit instead. Angel, who believes that Xavier was her responsibility, cannot let go of the thought that she should’ve protected him.
Weeks after the shooting, disbelief over this tragic event lingers in Usanga’s family and in the community.
“Personally I came to terms with the fact that he never had anything bad in his life ever happen to him and that he was okay, but at the same time, all of us who grew to love this little boy are faced with turmoil and questions of why he had to go so early, why his life was taken,” Usanga said. “There’s a whole community of people with emptiness in our hearts and in our minds.”
In dedication to Xavier’s memory, there will be a garden planted, commemorating the joy of his life while drawing parallels between his contagious happiness and the blooming of flowers.
“I always told Xavier that he was the perfect little boy and that I never wanted him to grow up, that he could be like Peter Pan or even one of the Lost Boys, that he could always be perfect and never be faced with any of the possible things that were out in the world. I kept him so sheltered. He was just so great.”
According to Usanga, Xavier’s gentle spirit and kindness will live on through those that knew him.
“He was never upset. He was always was the sunrise in the morning and the rainbow at the end of the day for everybody he came across.”