I Want Justice For Murdered Children

With no resolution in the 1995 death of her son, LaWanda Hawkins hopes to help police find answers to unsolved killings

- Christine Pelisek And Jeff Truesdell

LaWanda Hawkins’s only child, Reggie, had ambitions. “He loved music, he loved dancing,” she says. “He would just be creating his own moves in the basement, and he was teaching his cousins how to move like him.” But on Dec. 6, 1995, those dreams came to an end. Police found the body of 19-year-old Reggie Reese shot to death on the San Pedro docks of the Port of Los Angeles. “They tried to call it gang-related,” remembers Hawkins. “And my husband said, ‘Well, if it’s gang-related, tell us who did it then. If you can say that, then you should know.’”