Trina Kancey, the mother of Samuel Brown, who was shot and killed in 2007, said she isn’t rejoicing at the death of the suspect in her son’s murder, Labron Brown.
The mother of a Florida teen who was gunned down at a 2007 party said she was shocked when the suspect in the shooting was found shot to death in a car on the side of I-95.
Trina Kancey said she's finally getting closure, although it's not the kind she wanted or expected.
Kancey's son, 16-year-old Samuel Brown, was attending a graduation ceremony at the Polish American Club of Miami back in June 2007 when he was shot and killed along with another victim.
"I will never forget that's a day that is embedded in me forever," Kancey said. "He was the peacemaker that night, the peacemaker who was killed. He was killed."
Prosecutors identified Labron Brown as the gunman and he was arrested. But Labron Brown, who was just 15 at the time of the shooting was released after prosecutors dropped the charges following two years of court hearings.
Just one witness out of the 300 people who were packed into the club came forward, but the witness later recanted their story.
"My son's friend didn't even want to testify and that's hard as a mother," Kancey said. "My son stuck up for you and you wouldn't come to the court and give a deposition."
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Kancey said she kept an article of the day Brown was released.
"I don't know why I kept it, I guess as a reminder that he was free and he got away with murder," she said.
Brown was arrested again in 2012 in connection with the shooting death of a man during a robbery in Miami Gardens. But again the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office didn't have enough evidence to prosecute.
"I was like, wow he killed somebody else, now they have him and I was shocked to learn he was out again," Kancey said.
Flash forward to Saturday, when two men were found shot to death inside a car on I-95 near Northwest 54th Street in Miami-Dade. The driver of the car was Labron Brown.
"I was just like, wow, another mother has to bury her son," Kancey said. "I wasn't rejoicing because he was killed because I know how it feels as a mother to lose a child."
Messages left by NBC 6 for Labron Brown's mother weren't returned Tuesday.
The shooting, which also left 23-year-old Kenneth McCoy dead, is under investigation.
Kancey said she has prayed every day since her son was killed, but now her prayers are directed somewhere else, to Labron Brown's mother.
"I pray for her that she gets through this and I know that was her only child and I hope he comforts her and he comforts me, that's my prayer for her," she said.
