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He had come to see the memorial to his late daughter and the others who died with her, but Dwight Brown Sr. couldn’t find it.
He paced through the Old Dominion University campus, a maze of concrete, glass and brick. Where could it be?
Spotting a fire station, he crossed the street. My daughter, LaQuita Brown, died when a disgruntled coworker opened fire at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center in 2019, he told them.
Dwight had driven from his home in Greenville, N.C. He’d seen online that the university had recently opened a memorial to the victims of the mass shooting, and wanted to see it with his own eyes.
What happened next made the July 4 trip more than worth it.
Staff at the fire station called campus police for assistance.
Before long, Dwight, a 63-year-old semi-retired car salesman, received an impromptu personal escort, with sirens chiming and lights flashing, from local emergency responders to the memorial.
He was being led by an ODU police officer and followed by a medical van and a big red and white fire truck from the Norfolk Fire Department.
The drive couldn’t have been more than a minute. But the procession brought Dwight close to tears. “What they did should be recognized,” Dwight said later. “I am so grateful.”
They could have simply pointed him in the right direction, but instead the emergency responders escorted him and stayed with him to make sure he was okay — an act of kindness Dwight says he will never forget.
They arrived at the memorial, under the dappled shade of trees reaching to the sky. Twinkling mosaics stretch in all directions, 12 rays of sunshine to represent the 12 lives lost May 31, 2019, at the municipal center.
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Dwight approached the steel plate bearing his daughter’s name. He knelt and prayed. Quiet except for the soft babble of the memorial’s fountain.
Behind him stood a half a dozen staff from the fire station and campus police.
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What was she like, they asked him later. Tell us about your daughter.
LaQuita Brown was clever and kind, he told them. She learned French to better spread the message of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her laugh was infectious, her smile radiant. Her funeral overflowed, attended by people from around the globe. “She was so loved.”
She was working as a right-of-way technician handling legal and real estate issues at the time of her death.
She was killed on Dwight’s 61st birthday. He’d been released from the hospital, there due to heart failure, the day before the shooting.
She was his first born and his only daughter. She was 39.
And she will forever be in his heart.
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Olivia George, olivia.george@virginiamedia.com