Kiana’s brother keeps her story alive.
“No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that.” —Bob Avakian, Bsics 1: – 13 (source: revcom.com)
I spoke on the occurrence with my sister Kiana Nicole Blakey, that she was murdered execution style by an off duty black Cleveland Police Officer.on August 19th, 1989, where it was first suggested by the police department that it was a “suspected suicide”. My sister was destined for college, as she had obtained a scholarship at Ohio State University, and was to be driven down that next weekend. I could not believe the story that the police told my family, as she was such a vibrant person and a bright student, and was so full of life and vigor. The news that it was a suspected suicide made me cringe. This must be a lie. This is not possible that she even had that mindset when she was anxious to start her new venture as a OSU student. She was 19 years old at the time of her death, she would be 44 years old today if he life wasn’t stolen and taken too soon. I had just graduated from Syracuse University in that year and had came to Cleveland late in July, almost a month before, and had visited Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and began planning to get her moved and settled in her new place near campus. I had last seen her just less than a few hours before she was murdered, the news came later the next afternoon.
It has been weeks after this that more questions arose, when the body was held for almost three months, and the arrangements for a proper burial were delayed. But after much litigation, legal maneuvering, and the mishandeling and the red tape behind their so-called investigations, it was later found after the release of the body and another autopsy report, paid for by the family, the truth became evident that her death at the hands of this cowardly cop was an execution. This became quite the low blow for me, since I never would had ever thought that she would take her own life, and not just like that.
The report shows that she was shot at point blank range from a police issue weapon twice in the back of the head, which suggest that she was kneeling when she was murdered. The police officer was never found, as they told us that he had left the force just a month prior to her murder, and there was no way to contact him, which was an outright lie. How could you lose all information of a police officer that only left the force just recently? This was insane and asinine. The only thing we knew that he had the last name of Williams, as disclosed by people in the neighborhood where she lived that Identified him and was seen numerous times harassing my sister and others in the housing project where she lived. Today, those buildings have been torn down and replaced by the modern day public housing units in the eighties.
Many of my family, and even some friends and as a couple neighbors indicated, we believe the troubles of her harassment began after she spoke at a youth rally that was about woman’s right to be full human beings, and the issue of women’s rights, such as pro-choice, and workplace issues that affect them. She has mentioned being harassed by this cop a few weeks before the murder, which raised my suspicions that this was maybe political and that the police department was withholding information in lieu of her death, and why they lied and said it was suicide. But many question about her murder, and the cover-up by the political ethics of the city government and the mayor went to deaf ears and many misdirections. Three years later, much of the family that had done minimal communications with the case has settled for a 1.9 million dollar settlement from the city, which after taxes, lawyer fees, a second autopsy, and other expenses, it was pervilly to the life of a human being. Myself and a couple of siblings had to pool our monies together to get a headstone for her grave.
Time suspended that day
Reality ended its true ways
Sanity bended, hope frayed.
Life went undefended that day.
Time seems fractured permanently.
Separated into two eventualities.
In one you are here.
In the other you are not.
As this world moves on
The other will be forgotten.
In my mind you will always be young.
Your sweetest song forever unsung.
You slip by me day after day…I find myself falling after your memory.
Always. .Weeping,
My fingers grasp at time that will not spend,
Life lives without you…Speeding on toward its end. ~Art Blakey II, aka CrazyArt
(Obituary poem for Kiana Nicole) She has not
died in vain.
I had five brothers and nine sisters, and after the ordeal with the money deal, I have not much communicated with my other brothers, except one that presently lives in Jamaica Queens, although we have spoken more now than just a few years before, but still it will never be the same. It changes your perspective on your life and then the choices you make as you watch those bridges burn, never to be crossed again. Many ties were broken with much of my family, especially with my aunts because I lost all hope in religion, or how they perceive this is where I became an atheist. But over time because I could not just forget, not do anything, not say nothing, or just leave it as this was a tragedy that happened, and that she was in a better place, or that some god would wipe away all my tears of anguish and pain, and I should accept this. It was when one of my younger brothers another two years later had took his own life because Kiana’s death hit him hard, and he was ostracized because he just could not stand the pain of losing our little sister in this way, especially after dealing with our mother, who died of breast cancer over a year before at age 32, and the death some years ago of another sister that was killed instantly in a car accident from a reckless trucker in a hurry in a residential zone.
It has only been just a few years that I have began more openly to speak intensely about the murder of my sister by police, as I have stood with many other families been to too many wakes, funerals, vigils, marches, and still no justice for too many of those whom have lost loved ones at their bloody hands of the sanctioned murderers called our protectors: police, po-pos, five-o, blue bloods, pigs, poes, whatever you relate them to be.. But I also did not want her death to be in vain to a coward that disappeared out of the radar, not to be found or heard of again, which would become an ironic turn.
My son Malachi would be born more than a year and a half later in 1991, who would never come to know his aunt in the flesh, and it would be hard when he got a little older to talk about, but I did eventually tell him because I think he really deserved to know who she was and what sort a person she was, and that she is the greatest inspiration to fight, because no parent should have to bury their children, but I am so proud that he has grown to be quite the young handsome young man that not too long ago himself graduated from Ohio State with a bachelor’s degree in social sciences, as he has ambitions to be a journalist, but also has faced the scourge of police brutality through his lifetime as well, as he also has his stories of what he endured while enrolled there, or his old high school years. I do not think as black people that many of us are no stranger to police harassment and racial inequalities on many college campuses and schools all across the United States, and Ohio State is no exception to the rules.