Ms. Marie Phason, A Mother's story of devastating loss, and the power to forgive

On June 9, 1993, Ollie Marie Phason received a devastating phone call that would change the course of her life. Her 6-year-old son, Broderick Bell Jr., had been shot during a drive-by shooting. The incident galvanized the Mile High City amid a surge of violent gang activity in the early 1990s, and Broderick’s image was used as the face of Denver’s notorious “Summer of Violence,” a time marked by the senseless killing and injury of dozens of innocent people.“I thought he was going to die, and I didn’t want to see him that way; I wanted to remember him happy, with his karate uniform on,” she said. She sat in the waiting room and watched local news reports of the drive-by with images of her smiling son. People arrived at the hospital in droves to show support for the family. “I fell on my face and screamed out to God, asking him to save Broderick. I wanted to see a living God.” In the months preceding the Summer of Violence, Denver residents were terrorized by random drive-by shootings. It took the images of 6-year-old Broderick on life support to evoke a national response.
After the shooting, Denver’s former Mayor Wellington Webb held a press conference outside Phason’s home, declaring, “Enough is enough!” Webb announced a crackdown on gangs and lobbied for stricter gun control laws.