Lauren Justice
Andrea Irwin, in her home, looks at a collage of photos of her son, who was killed by a Madison police officer last March. “It feels like I’m burning inside.”
Twenty years ago, Andrea Irwin’s life changed forever when she became a mother.
She named her first child Tony Terrell Robinson, after his father. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy,” she remembers. “I never knew I could love like that. I’d never felt that unconditional, immediate, all-encompassing love before.”
Ten months ago, her son was shot dead by Madison police officer Matt Kenny. “All that love that I had when he was born is now the most incredible pain,” she says. “It’s like my rib cage is turning inward and crushing my heart. It feels like I’m burning inside.”
But it’s also a pain she fears letting go of. She keeps a journal by her bedside to transcribe her memories of Tony through sleepless nights. “I’m grasping onto whatever I can because I’m so afraid I’m going to forget.”
Irwin joins an exclusive set of mothers from around the country whose children of color have been killed by police.
On March 6, Kenny was investigating a call about someone jumping in and out of traffic who was suspected of battering two others. After arriving at a Williamson Street apartment, Kenny and Robinson, who was on psychedelic mushrooms at the time, struggled. Kenny told investigators Robinson hit him in the head, knocking him off balance in a stairway. Fearing he might be knocked unconscious, he drew his weapon and shot Robinson, who was unarmed, seven times.
Kenny was cleared of wrongdoing in the shooting, but many remain angry and upset over it. For activists with the Black Lives Matter movement, the killing was yet another example of how African Americans are devalued and victimized by law enforcement.
For Irwin, Robinson’s killing remains achingly personal, touching every part of her life, including her career and interactions with strangers.
“[Before my son’s death], I was doing well in my career, I was being promoted, and I had gotten a nice raise,” says Irwin, who is the mother of three other children — two boys, 16 and 14, and an 11-year-old daughter. “Everything was good, my kids were doing good.”
She now barely recognizes her own life. “I lost my job. I had to move. My second son is in Canada — I just have my two younger kids. My career is gone. Everything is different,” says Irwin, who turned 38 last week. “My life is completely opposite from where I was a year ago.”
Formerly a case manager for a transitional living service working with children, Irwin says she lost her job due to the time she had to take off after her son was killed.
She also was forced to move. A local TV station posted audio from a 911 call she made last January when she feared Tony was suicidal. The call included Irwin’s address and phone number, which were broadcast.
“People would bang on my patio door at night and throw all kinds of stuff at my house,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep. I was scared I couldn’t get to my kids if something happened. So, we got out of there.”
Her second-oldest son now lives in Canada with Irwin’s brother. “I didn’t want him here. I’m very afraid for either of my boys to have an encounter with any police officer in the city because I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says. “He can create his own friendships there and not have people know everything that’s going on in his life. He’s not gone for good, but he needed to go to grieve.”
Irwin has also been attacked online. “People are sitting behind their computers and saying that because he was on mushrooms, that he deserved to die,” she says. “As if a 19-year-old experimenting with drugs in Madison is somehow unheard of.”
Some online commenters harp on the fact that her son was on probation for a conviction of being party to a robbery at the time he was killed.
“His previous conviction is something he beat himself up about more than anyone else — it has nothing to do with the day he died. The 911 call I made in January also had nothing to do with March 6,” Irwin says. “None of that is related to him being killed.”
A Facebook page created as a tribute to her son was hacked and someone began posting images of the bloody crime scene on it, she says. She’s been accused of living lavishly off of money from an online fundraising campaign. All of it and more went to pay for the funeral of Robinson, who like most 19-year-olds, didn’t have life insurance.
In all, the $18,000 collected from the online campaign, “every ounce of it went to his funeral,” she says. “I had $10,000 in savings that’s all gone now. We haven’t even gotten him a headstone for his gravesite yet because we can’t afford it.”
Irwin’s also leery of getting a headstone because the gravesite has been vandalized. “They keep stealing things from it, and someone drove over his grave,” she says. “We’ve tried to keep it secret where he was buried because there are so many people against us.”
Some have perceived her as the face of an anti-police movement or of directing the Black Lives Matter activists. “I’ve never claimed to be a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. I support it, but I’m not a part of it,” says Irwin, who is white. “I’m not against the police department; I never have been. I believe in law and order.”
“But I also believe that law enforcement at this time have taken advantage of their power. Something’s shifted, and it’s dangerous,” she adds. “There needs to be an overhaul, and there needs to be changes.”
In August, Irwin filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city and Kenny claiming her son’s constitutional rights were violated. The goal of the lawsuit is two-fold, says attorney David Owens.
“The best possible resolution for this lawsuit is that the family is compensated for their damage and their harm and also that the city of Madison takes the opportunity to create affirmative change,” he says. “If you go back just a couple years to the shooting of Paul Heenan, another unarmed individual in the community, you can see that there was an opportunity, that the city of Madison should have been put on notice that this is an issue, and they had the opportunity to institute change, and they didn’t do it effectively.”
In August, the city settled a lawsuit brought by Heenan’s family for $2.3 million.
In October, attorneys for the city and Kenny asked that the lawsuit be dismissed on the basis that Robinson’s own actions caused his death. Depositions have not yet begun, and no trial date has been set. The city attorney’s office has asked the police department not to respond to new questions about the incident due to the lawsuit.
Since her son’s death, Irwin is often recognized on the street. These interactions are starkly different from those she has online.
“It’s always positive, it’s never one of the people who are against me that comes up to me,” she says. “Some people know who I am right away, and some people ask me if I’m Tony Robinson’s mom. Most of the time, people ask if they can hug me. They tell me how sorry they are for my loss and that they pray for me all the time.”
“It makes me feel good to know that there are people who don’t hate me and people that don’t hate my son, that there are people who do stand behind us and do think this was wrong,” she continues. “It gives me hope that we can get some form of accountability and justice out of what’s happened. My son deserves that.”
The holidays were rough. “I made Christmas dinner, but no one really ate it,” she says. “If he was here, Tony would’ve eaten half of it before I was done cooking.”
Just one semester shy of an associate degree in human services, Irwin says she’d like to return to Madison College or start a nonprofit to help children before they get into legal trouble. But she has no concrete plans.
“I’m really thinking about leaving,” she says. “There’s nothing beautiful about Madison to me anymore. There’s nothing but pain here for me.”
