Gun violence victims immortalized through Souls Shot Portrait Project
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Some victims of gun violence are being immortalized on canvas.
A local nonprofit is hoping that a traveling art exhibition will bring change to our streets one portrait at a time.
There are currently three Souls Shot exhibitions.
"I ran around the corner, and my son was being covered up. And even then, I was yelling at him to 'get up. Byron, I need you to get up. My baby couldn't get up," Lisa Dessiso said. "He didn't deserve to be murdered, nobody deserves to be murdered."
July 11 will be one year since Lisa Dessiso's son, Byron, was murdered.
He was on the phone with his mother when he was walking home that night.
"I told him I was up waiting on him, and then I heard gunshots. And a mother knows when something is wrong with her child," Dessiso said.
Byron was her everything.
He was a licensed mechanic, football player, and father to a 3-year-old who he called his princess.
Shot at random, his mother says, just feet from home in Hunting Park, after a night out with a friend.
"To know him was definitely to love him," Chamar Montgomery Cooper said.
Chamar Cooper is a close family friend and knew Byron for years. He's also an artist and graphic designer.
"Because of the tragic way he passed away, I wanted him to live, and because my work is photo-realistic, that is like my way of keeping Byron's name and face alive," Cooper said. "When I heard about the Souls Shot Portrait Project, I had to become a part. Being an artist and having an opportunity to have his name heard and his face seen."
The Souls Shot Portrait Project is memorializing lives lost to shootings.
The traveling exhibit aims to show the devastating effects of this surge in gun violence, while trying to bring a sense of peace to a victim's family.
"My nights are long. Sometimes I eat, sometimes I don't. I find myself still sitting there waiting on my son. He was all I had," Dessiso said.
When asked what keeps Lisa Dessiso going, she said "getting justice for my son's murder. To take a life, I don't know what kind of person would do that. I really believe if they took just another few seconds, and made another choice, Byron would be here and they wouldn't be where they're at."
"This is just the beginning of the quest of keeping Byron alive. I want to be the kind of parent that takes my grief and takes it to a plus for other mothers," she said.
The Souls Shot Portrait Project has three exhibitions this year in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Artists like Chamar say they will continue their work until hopefully, one day, this exhibit is no longer needed.
"I want them to see his kindness, I want them to feel his spirit. I want people to look at this portrait and know this was a really good guy," Cooper said.
