By Kailey Cota kcota@postandcourier.com
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Her house had been targeted mistakenly during a drive-by shooting, she said. Her family had no relation to the six men who are now charged. They were simply home at the wrong time, according to Hunter.
That night changed her entire life. She’s constantly thinking about her son, wondering “Why?”
But instead of allowing her pain consume her, she chose to channel it into a purpose: working to stop other Orangeburg families from experiencing the same loss.
Winston Hunter poses for a photo in his uniform. The 6-year-old was shot and killed in his home in 2022.
It’s the same path Michelle Green turned to after both of her sons were killed, a decade apart.
After her oldest son, Isaac, was fatally shot in Columbia in 2006, Green directed her loss into starting an LLC and leading workshops about gun violence across the country.
But when she got the call that her only other son, Carlton, had opened the door for a person who then shot and killed him in 2016, she shuttered her organization and fell into a period of severe depression.
“I didn’t understand why those chain of events happened to me,” Green said.
Eventually, she was introduced to Voices of Black Mothers United, an initiative that focuses on empowering the families who have lost loved ones to gun violence.