Living with 'indescribable' pain of losing her son, Louisville woman calls on parents to act

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Nearly six years have passed, but Nicole Cowherd still visits her son's grave every week.

She brings fresh flowers. She wipes down the headstone. And she talks to her son — Richard Harper, who was just 18 years old when he was shot and killed at his school bus stop in southwest Louisville.

"It tends to get dirty out here," Cowherd said, brushing off the headstone during a visit this week. "So I want to keep him as clean as I can."

Harper was a senior at Valley High School when he was shot in January 2019. According to Cowherd, the shooter was another teenager — someone her son once called a friend.

"It was over a female," she said. "My son wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you can't go to school, where else can you go?"

Cowherd rushed to the hospital that morning, hoping for the best. At first, doctors said her son might survive but be paralyzed. Later, they told her there was nothing more they could do.

"I lost it," she said. "This pain is indescribable. Every day, you have to live life without your child. That's not fair."

Now, Cowherd is speaking out — hoping her pain becomes a wake-up call for other parents.

"Every time I hear about a shooting — whether it's an adult, a teen, a child, a woman or a man — it brings me right back to that day," she said. "We have to start paying attention."

Police say youth gun violence is one of the most urgent problems facing the city, and Louisville Metro Police Chief Paul Humphrey is calling on parents to step in before tragedy strikes.

"Just yesterday, we got an anonymous tip that several juveniles had weapons," Humphrey said during his bi-weekly news conference. "We recovered guns, drugs — and arrested three juveniles and one adult. This is frustrating. This is unacceptable."

Humphrey said police can only do so much — and that accountability has to begin at home.

"If I could prosecute parents in these cases, I'd do it all day long," Humphrey said. "You need to know where your kids are. That's not a system problem — that's a parenting problem.

"You hear it all the time — they got caught up in the wrong crowd. No. Your kid is the wrong crowd. They're a reflection of you."

Cowherd agrees. She said there are warning signs — and too many people are ignoring them.

"Go through your child's phone," she said. "Check their social media. It's all there — where they're going to meet up, what they're planning. But we live in a world where everyone is always on their phone and not paying attention."

Her message to parents: don't wait until you're the one picking out a casket.

"If you know your child is out here doing wrong and you don't do anything about it, this will come to your doorstep," Cowherd said. "You'll be the one sitting on that front row of the church, reading their obituary. And you're going to wish you had done something."

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