CLEVELAND — At News 5, we follow through on stories that matter to you and the community. This story sent shockwaves through the community and hit Good Morning Cleveland anchor Danita Harris personally.
We don’t just report the initial story—we follow through to its conclusion. Read and watch our previous reporting on this story below and see more stories that we've followed through on here.
In the summer of 2018, I was saying almost every day from this desk that someone had been shot and killed.
As a journalist, I know how to state the facts and try not to show emotion one way or the other.
But on June 20, a 9-year-old girl named Saniyah Nicholson was killed by gunfire while sitting in the back seat of her mother's car.
For some reason, reporting her death broke me.
My tears flowed on the air and my mother's heart wanted to comfort her mother and give her the chance to speak her heart.
Five months after Saniyah’s death, I sat across from her mother, Marshawnette Daniels, and just listened to her share the unspeakable pain the loss of her child brought to her life.
Five years later, I wanted to follow through and see how she was doing. I discovered that Daniels has found power in the pain.
"I want to see my girl, I want to see her so bad. I want her to say hey mommy I'm okay. I want to hear that."
Daniels said that to me five years ago as she was processing the grief of losing Saniyah to gun violence. Her ears would never again hear her child's voice. Her heart had never felt so much pain.
When I asked her how she’s handling her pain, Daniels said “That's a great question. I just take it day by day and sometimes it's minute by minute, and then some days it's second by second, but I've gotten better. I know how to navigate through it when the wave comes, you know cause grief is like a wave. And so what I do, I just pray, I'll go walk. I'll just sit in the dark sometimes and just think so I don't go back into that place that was so hard to come out of.”
But now that Daniels is managing her pain better, she’s doing something to help mothers who have experienced the loss of a child due to gun violence. It’s something she told me five years ago she would do. Now, she’s following through and doing it.
"I'm going to have a gathering for the mothers and it's going to be called its Power in the Pain in the name of my ministry Hidden Scars, because our scars are hidden," said Daniels.
"I want to create this atmosphere where mothers are able to be themselves. Whether you want to come here, you want to scream, you want to shout you want to cry, this is a safe space. Last week I went to her site. I decorated it and I just screamed because I needed a release."
The gathering of mothers will take place on September 23, 2023, at 12 p.m. at Greater New Canaan Ministries in Cleveland.
Daniels wants mothers to know that there is someone who understands their pain and wants to help them heal healthily.
When I asked Daniels what she thought Saniyah would say about what she’s doing to help mothers who have lost their children to violence she said, “Saniyah would say, Go Mommy!”.
