'They just coldblooded killed him,' said Joslin Simms, second from left, whose son Rayburn Demarcus Simms was gunned down in Durham in 2005. Simms stood in the rain next to her mother, Ardelia Simms, left, and behind her grandson, Rayburn's son, Marcus, 9, during a Parents of Murdered Children vigil in Durham. 'When I go to see my baby now, I have to sit on the ground and talk to the dirt. I look at his picture on the stone, but I can't touch him,' said Simms. 'Why did God let it happen?' Simms also wonders why her cousin Roderick Butler was gunned down in 2007. Standing near Simms on the front row, Chequita Jaiiteh, right, struggles with the murders of her brother and uncle. 'I'm still in denial,' she said. As family members, one by one, spoke the names of their lost loved ones, Joslin Simms called out Rayburn's name in the darkness. She later said, 'I know, deep down, it wasn't God's fault. He didn't pull the trigger. God loaned [Rayburn] to me. He just loaned him to me for a while, and now [Rayburn is] back home.'

Joslin Simms, whose son, Rayburn Simms, was shot to death in Durham in 2005, explains how her son's death impacts her life, how it challenges her faith, and how she and her grandson, Marcus Simms, 9, cope with their loss.