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Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Using grief and loss to bring a community together
permission to hold a celebration for the
week in the City of Newburgh, and made
boards with Habitat for Humanity for
residents to put pictures of their loved
ones at a vigil on Broadway.
Each year Drake and Valentine save
the boards, unfortunately every year they
continue to see more names and faces of
victims, even with decreasing crime rates.
The two also organize Tabby and
Omani every year in August around the
girls birthday to celebrate who the girls
were and bring the community together
around all of their favorite things.
“A lot of times parents wait for their
kids to act up to take action, at 12 years
old they have their minds made up on
what they’re going to do,” said Valentine.
“When you’re young you need guidance
and to be listened to. It’s sad but there
are a lot of kids in this city without
that guidance, it takes a village to raise
these kids. If someone had been there for
the young man who did this maybe our
daughters would still be here.”
This week is Crime Victims week.
Boards will be available for viewing for
the next two weeks in the lot on Broadway
between Lander St and Johnston
St.
By KATELYN CORDERO
[email protected]
Rhonda Valentine and Jeanette Drake
never anticipated when they said goodbye
to their daughters on Halloween Eve it
would be for the final time.
The two girls who encouraged others
to do well, and fought to make the City
of Newburgh a better place ended up the
innocent victims of a senseless crime.
On October 30 2016 Valentine and
Drake each received a panicked call from
family members that there was a shooting
at a Halloween party, and it might be their
daughters.
Jeanette Drake hung up with her
daughter ten minutes earlier when she
received a call from her niece running
through the crowds to find her cousin
Tabitha.
Drake’s niece watched as her cousin’s
armed dropped down on the side of the
stretcher carried into an ambulance with
Drake’s name tattooed on it.
“I got in the car and drove around in
between police cars, when I got to the
hospital there were hundreds of people
standing outside,” said Drake. “People
were just staring at you, it was just so
quiet. I had to stay there and wait until
2:45 a.m. they told me she was gone.”
Valentine remembers the night very
differently, she was coming home from a
party and didn’t know her daughter had
plans to go out.
“My son walked into the room and
said ‘Mom get up we have to go Omani got
shot’. I immediately fell to my knees and
started praying,” said Valentine
When Valentine arrived at the hospital
with her family Omani was still fighting
for her life.
“She had this big bandage on her head
and she was laying there,” said Valentine.
“I was talking with her pleading and
begging her to stay, but as I was talking a
tear rolled down her eye and I knew she
couldn’t fight no more.”
Omani Free passed away at 3:34 a.m.
and Tabitha Cruz passed away at 2:30
a.m. The tragedy not only sent the two
mothers into deep grief and mourning,
but it sent the community into mourning.
The two girls were motivators among
their friends to get people to do good
in school, pass their classes, and make
changes in the city to lower the crime
rates. Three weeks before her death,
Tabitha led a march through the city
demanding for more lights and cameras
to make the streets safer.
Just that night Omani told a girl to
Valentine and Drake didn’t know each other well before losing their daughters, but joined
forces to help children in the community find guidance and stay out of trouble.
turn around and go back home, because
she was too young, potentially saving her
life.
In the days following the shooting
there was a memorial walk for the girls.
Drake opened her doors to her house
to find over a hundred people standing
outside her door.
“I remember on that walk I was very
nervous,” said Drake. “One side of the
city was standing on one side of the
street and the others on the other side,
then a kid walked over as if to put aside
the tension for one night. We walked
down Mill Street to Broadway all together
singing ‘Lean on Me’. It was incredible,
these 18 year old guys didn’t have to put
on this face of who they were, they all just
set that aside and walked together.”
This was just one of the first times the
city came together mourning the death
of the two girls. Drake and Valentine are
determined to make a difference to help
the children that are struggling, so that
another parent in the City of Newburgh
doesn’t have to feel the pain of burying
their child.
Drake and Valentine honored
their daughter’s legacies by becoming
advocates for crime victims in the City of
Newburgh. When Drake went to watch the
sentencing of her daughter’s murderer,
she found a flyer sitting next to her on a
bench for Crime Victims week in Orange
County.
“I remember I didn’t want to go to
court that day, but there was something
there that told me I needed to be there,”
said Drake. “That year was the worst
homicide rate in the city, I thought it was
insane if we were the murder capital of
New York State why wasn’t something
happening here for Crime Victim’s week.”
Drake went to City Council to ask for
The loss of Omani and Tabitha could be felt
throughout the city, people lit candles and
created a memorial for the two girls.