Lauren Justice
Andrea Johnson: “I want to go somewhere where nobody knows me.”
Andrea Johnson cannot find peace here.
In the three years since her son, Tony Robinson, was shot and killed by a Madison police officer, she and her three other children have endured a barrage of negative attention and anger directed at them, she says. Much of it has come from strangers.
“It’s been everything from people saying my son deserved to die to rumors about me being on drugs to my kids constantly being asked about their brother,” she says. “People that don’t even know me, hate me. I get nervous when I’m out — I feel like people are watching me wherever I go.”
The 19-year-old Robinson was killed by Officer Matt Kenny during an encounter in an apartment stairway on the 1100 block of Williamson Street on March 6, 2015.
“I can’t escape what happened while I’m here,” Johnson says.
So, she’s leaving.
After her son graduates from East High School in June, Johnson (whose maiden name is Irwin), will move with her three children and new husband to a suburb of Sacramento, California.
“I just want a simple life. I can’t even get a job here. Nobody wants to hire me,” she explains. “Madison is just not the place I used to know.”
The night her son was killed, police were called for reports of Robinson jumping into traffic and committing battery on Williamson Street. Robinson was unarmed but had taken psychedelic mushrooms. The killing drew national attention as another instance of a white police officer killing an unarmed person of color — Robinson was biracial; Kenny is white. The shooting prompted numerous protests against the police in Madison.
In May 2015, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne announced he would not file charges against Kenny, saying that the officer was justified in using deadly force.
Johnson then filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city. In February 2017, the city settled for $3.35 million, the largest settlement in state history for a police-involved killing.
Johnson says lawyers took more than a third of that money and she split the rest with Robinson’s father. The money has caused Johnson new problems.
“Money changes everything — it brings out the worst in people,” she says. “I’ve never had so many strangers ask me for money in my life — people I don’t even know asking me to help pay their rent.”
Johnson says she’s helped some people and sympathizes with those seeking money during tough times — “I get it, I’ve been there” — but adds, “It doesn’t really matter how much you do for people, it’s never going to be enough.”
Last August, she moved about 20 minutes away to the village of Brooklyn. That wasn’t far enough, she says.
She hopes moving out of state will make things easier for her children, sons aged 18 and 16, and a 13-year-old daughter.
While taking part in the nationwide student walkout against gun violence on March 14, Johnson’s 16-year-old son spotted Kenny doing crowd control on horseback.
“My son broke down crying,” she says. “To know that the man who took the life of my son is so close to my other children.… I want to say I can’t believe they put him down there, but unfortunately, I can believe it.
“They know that my son goes to East,” she adds. “That is deliberate. It’s terrible.”
Police Chief Michael Koval says the assignment was a regrettable mistake. “This was an oversight on MPD’s part, not a deliberate action designed to be insensitive or confrontational,” he says.
When students noticed Kenny’s presence, Koval says, “a decision was made to pull Kenny so as to avoid further conflict.”
Johnson chose California after feeling at ease during a recent trip there. “The weather is beautiful, the people are nicer — it’s a different vibe,” she says, adding that she will come back to visit. “I have people I care for here. My son is buried here. I’ll be back.”
After settling into her new home, Johnson plans to ease back into working with a part-time job “to get my feet wet and try to find my passion again.” She hopes to return to social service work with children. “I want to find my way back to the work I used to love.”
But more than anything, she wants to be anonymous.
“I want to go somewhere where nobody knows me and I’m only important to the people that care about me,” she says. “I told my kids: ‘We get to create our own identity, people won’t know anything about us but what we tell them. We can start over. We can go back to being the nobodies we were before.’”
