reporting<\/a>, on March 26, 1997, \u00a0San Diego police responded to a reported fight involving up to 50 people at Crown Point Shores. Reportedly, Curtis and another boy were chased into the water. The other boy was rescued by a lifeguard, but Curtis drowned. His body was recovered the following morning. In 2017, his death was officially ruled a homicide.<\/p>\nCurtis’s mother, Patricia Ward, who lives in Florida, had someone give her updates on the tree until recently got word that it was gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It was more than just a tree, it was more than just a tree,” Ward said.<\/p>\n
The loss of the memorial has deepened the family’s anguish.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I feel like I couldn’t protect him when he died, and by them keep stealing his tree; I still can’t protect him now. It’s like I can’t protect his name, I can’t protect who he was,” Ward said.<\/p>\n
For nearly three decades, Ward has been trying to piece together the exact circumstances of her son’s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He supposedly ran out in the water, but we have a witness, and I still know [the witness] to this day. [The witness] saw them [suspect] carry a body into the water, basically placing him into the water. So due to the coroner’s report, I don’t know what happened to my son, so that’s been my struggle, that’s been my pain,” Ward said.<\/p>\n
Looking forward, Ward hopes to install a bench at Crown Point Shores to honor Curtis’ memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A memorial tree for Curtis Williamson has disappeared from Crown Point Shores again, intensifying his mother’s nearly 29-year…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":511107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-511106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-sandiego","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115882839693051817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}