By Kelly Boyce
Four years ago, Chanel Petro-Nixon was murdered near her home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn at the age of 16. A community activist posted signs in the neighborhood that said, “Somebody Knows Something.” To this day, no one has come forth with any information.
In the hopes that someone still will, Chanel’s family and members of the community led a march and vigil on June 19. “This march is for justice,” Chanel’s mother, Lucita Petro-Nixon, said. “We need closure.”
About 75 people participate annually in the march and vigil for Chanel, and Chanel’s mother said it will continue until the case is solved. “We’re doing this every year,” Petro-Nixon said. “I hope it will stir up the conscience and they will come forward.”
Kanicka Ashterman, Chanel’s best friend, said a lot of people in the neighborhood may not want anyone to inform. “But I look at it,” said the 20-year-old, “like, if it was your family, you would want someone to snitch.”
Chanel was last seen when she left her home, just north of Atlantic Avenue, on Father’s Day in 2006. She was going to apply for a job at the Applebee’s Restaurant on Fulton Street, but she never arrived there. Her body was found four days later in a garbage bag at 212 Kingston Ave. in Crown Heights, less than a mile from her home.
“The lady in 212 asked the garbage men why they were leaving the bag and they said it was too heavy, that she would have to break it up,” Petro-Nixon said. “So she went down to look at the bag and when she opened it up, she saw my daughter.”
Because Chanel’s body showed no signs of a struggle or sexual assault, police had few leads. Although Chanel had gone missing in broad daylight on Fulton Street, a busy thoroughfare in Brooklyn, no witnesses have come forward. Even a reward, currently at $32,541, hasn’t helped. “They’ve been trying for four years to find the motive, who did it,” Petro-Nixon said. “They had different leads but the leads didn’t go together.” Chanel’s tennis shoes and cell phone are still missing. She had been strangled, but detectives estimate she was alive until 24 hours before her body was found.
“It hurts that wherever she was for those four days she must have been scared, but I hope she was able to call on God,” Petro-Nixon said, later adding, “We are Christian people, so I hope she has some kind of peace.”
As Christians, Petro-Nixon, 51, a mental health worker, says she and her husband, Garvin Petro-Nixon, 46, a ramp agent for Delta Airlines, have always relied on God, and especially so since their daughter’s death. “When the detectives first told me they found her body, I said, ‘Lord, give me strength,’” she recalled. “I knew only the Lord could give me strength.”
When Rev. W. Taharka Robinson, father of three girls, heard of the grim circumstances of Chanel’s murder, he was motivated to action. Although he didn’t know Chanel or her family, he created the “Somebody Knows Something,” flyers, papering the community with them. “Something that heinous, where you can put a child out with the trash, something needs to be done about it,” he said recently. “The whole community needs to be outraged. If something like that happens, it means no one is safe.”
“Somebody Knows Something” became the mantra for the Petro-Nixon family. Chanel’s mother said that she and many other residents believe that someone in the community has information about the murder. “I’m sure that person had help to move the body,” she said, “but they’re not coming forth.”
The case drew national attention in 2006 and was featured on “America’s Most Wanted,” the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show, and on CNN with reporter Nancy Grace. Media coverage waned, however, as there were no new leads to follow. Yet the Petro-Nixon family has refused to give up, remaining in constant contact with the police detectives. “The police are still working with me,” Chanel’s mother said. “They assure me they won’t stop until they get an answer.”
The Petro-Nixons likewise have continued working with Robinson and others in the community in organizing the march and vigil. The vigil and march are held not only to remind the community that “Somebody Knows Something” about the murder, but also to honor Chanel’s memory. Her mother described Chanel as “a typical teenager” who “loved history,” one who “was very quiet, but not afraid to speak her opinion. She would speak out if she had to.”
What Petro-Nixon remembers most about her daughter is “the way she carried herself. She showed a lot of respect for herself.” That inner confidence was manifested in her professional goals. Her mother said Chanel originally wanted to be a psychologist and go into forensics, and then decided she wanted to be a nurse. She was an honors student and spent hours studying.
Chanel was the middle child and also the only girl in her family. Petro-Nixon said that this has made her death especially hard for Garvin. “She was our only daughter, and it happened on Father’s Day,” she said. “So it makes it even worse for him.”
Chanel’s death has understandably been very difficult for her two brothers to deal with. “The oldest brother was very protective of her,” Petro-Nixon says, and he is now an adult and has moved out of the house, while the younger brother is in school in Orlando.
“We were a close-knit family; we did everything together,” Petro-Nixon said, so losing her daughter and having both sons away from home is a change. “It’s only me and my husband at home now. I can talk and cry about it, but he keeps everything in.”
Yet she is grateful that her mother and sister live in New York and for the support she gets from her husband, her family, her friends, her co-workers, and others in the community, especially Robinson. “He’s been influential in finding peace and justice for us,” she said.
Part of the peace she’s been able to find has been in accepting what she can learn from the experience of tragically losing her daughter. “It’s made me more humble,” she said. “You don’t believe something like this will happen to you. Now, when I say I understand, I really understand what you are going through.”
The march and vigil in her daughter’s memory also serve to remind Petro-Nixon how precious life is and how quickly and unexpectedly it can disappear. “She knew I loved her,” Petro-Nixon recalled of Chanel. “We kissed each other before she left. I had the opportunity to kiss my daughter good-bye before she left that day.”
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