‘I’m scared’: Mom fears son’s killer could come back to harm her, family

Kwandarrius Howze One year after a young father was shot and killed in his sleep, the victim’s mother says she’s afraid the killer could come back. The shooting still remains unsolved.

By Eli Brand

CHARLOTTE — One year after a young father was shot and killed in his sleep, the victim’s mother says she’s afraid the killer could come back. The shooting still remains unsolved.

All that Kwanda Howze has left of her son are necklaces with pictures of him and the blanket used to wipe his blood from the floor of their west Charlotte apartment.

“He wouldn’t want me to cry,” she told Channel 9′s Eli Brand on Monday.

Kwandarrius Howze was shot to death inside his apartment on Park Fairfax Drive in September 2023 after someone opened fire into the building.

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“We laid down and went to sleep. About 5:00, we just woke up to ‘pow, pow, pow, pow, pow!’” his mom said.

“I know he was downstairs sleeping. I run downstairs and my son is laying on the floor. My back glass is shot out and he is just laying on the floor trying to breathe, and blood is coming. So, I laid down with him until he took his last breath.”

It’s a haunting memory Kwanda Howze still lives with and something that brings her deep sadness. She also fears that whoever did this to her son could come back and harm her, the rest of her children, and her son’s young children who she is now raising as her own.

“I’ve just been trying to make it for his children, my children, trying to be more protective and be more aware,” she said. “It just causes us to live in fear. My kids are scared. I’m scared.”

Howze’s renewed call for justice and peace comes on the same day multiple Charlotte groups that dealt with similar violence piled into a bus headed for the nation’s capital. They’re demanding new action to stop gun violence nationwide.

That’s a continuous fight for people like Howze, who are living with loss and fear every day.

“I still can’t believe it because he was such a sweet person,” she said.

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