Angel Brown holds tight to the diploma awarded her son, Isaiah Carter, at Manley Career Academy High School's graduation Sunday. Carter was killed this past November.
Isaiah Carter would have been the 16th student to walk across the stage during the Manley Career Academy High School commencement ceremony Sunday afternoon.
Instead, Angel Brown accepted the diploma on behalf of her son, who was shot and killed last November in Chicago's South Austin neighborhood.
"This means everything to me," Brown said, her eyes moist with tears. "I know Isaiah's looking down. He told me he was going to get this diploma — and he got it."
Looking down at the diploma, she whispered: "You did it, Isaiah."
On Nov. 13, Carter, 18, was walking down the street on the 0-99 block of South Parkside Avenue when he started talking to at least three people, police said. One of them turned toward Carter and shot him in the chest, according to police.
Carter then ran from the scene and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition. Following emergency surgery and three blood transfusions, Brown said Carter could occasionally give physical signals to indicate that he could hear and understand what people were saying.
But after almost two weeks, Brown said she spoke to her son, sensing that the end was near.
"I said, 'If you are ready to go, Mama is going to be OK,'" she said.
Carter, of the 5500 block of West Van Buren Street, succumbed to his injuries on Nov. 24, the day before his 19th birthday. Nearly seven months later, no one has been arrested in his slaying.
"His soul is going to live on forever," Brown said. "They only took a body off this Earth."
Brown described Carter as a jovial, personable comedian who wanted to go to college and learn to be a cook. Brown said she was surprised at the opportunity to accept her youngest son's diploma and decided to walk across the stage to celebrate the accomplishment he'd so eagerly anticipated.
"This was his day," she said.
Several of Brown's relatives from Milwaukee also attended the ceremony at the Illinois Institute of Technology campus. So, too, did Carter's girlfriend, Tiffany Heard, 20, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with Carter's image on the front and an airbrushed message on the back: "We were suppose(d) to be together forever but that all ended on such a tragic day. Love 1 and only."
The student body and several audience members greeted Brown with a standing ovation as she went to the stage to receive the diploma.
"I just want to thank the Manley family," Brown said to the audience. "Manley really went out of their way for my son. I want to thank everybody who shared in Isaiah's life."
As the 103 graduates — men in black caps and gowns, women in red — marched across the stage to raucous cheers, Brown stood at the back of the auditorium, clutching her son's diploma against her chest and clasping a photo of him in her hand.