Digital Extra: The shooting of Sgt. Cornel Young Jr.

City mourns fallen officer - Leisa Young was inspired by her son

Patrolman Cornel Young Jr.'s mother says she drew strength from her son to make remarkable strides in her own life.

PROVIDENCE — Leisa Young was awakened at 2:30 in the morning by the sound of the doorbell ringing.

At first, she thought it might be her son, a Providence police officer, dropping by to check on her because she had been recuperating from surgery.

But it was not her son, Patrolman Cornel Young Jr., ringing the doorbell. It was his father, Police Maj. Cornel Young.

"He came to the house and told me my son had been shot and was at the hospital in surgery," she said. "We went together to the emergency room, and we waited while he was in surgery.

"They told us that he was alive, but that his condition was critical. Twenty minutes later, the surgeon came out and said that he didn't make it," she said.

The message delivered by that doctor is every parent's nightmare.

But for Leisa Young, the blow was especially painful.

She and her son, 29, had an especially close relationship. In fact, after she and her husband were divorced, she drew strength from her son to make remarkable strides in her own life.

A young mother on welfare, Leisa Young began taking courses at the College of Continuing Education at the University of Rhode Island, eventually earning a master's degree.

She credits her only son for the inspiration to move ahead.

"We were close. We were like partners. We had a very close relationship. We've always been each other's motivation," she said in a telephone interview from her small house with clapboard siding and an attached garage that sits high on a hill on Princess Avenue.

"Most of what I accomplished in my life, I accomplished for him," she said.

Patrolman Young was shot and killed outside a Providence restaurant early Friday morning in what police have described as a tragic case of mistaken identity by two of his fellow police officers.

Off duty and out of uniform, he had stopped at Fidas Restaurant on Valley Street to pick up a take-out order. He left the diner to assist police called in to quell a disturbance.

Patrolmen Carlos A. Saraiva and Michael Solitro III mistook Young for a suspect and shot him three times, according to Police Chief Urbano Prignano.

About an hour later, Leisa Young heard the knock on her door.

It made sense that it would be her son, nicknamed Jai. He often stopped by her home when he got off duty. And lately, he'd been especially attentive.

"I had been sick and recovering from surgery. He had been taking me for doctors' appointments. I thought he might be stopping by to check on me. Sometimes he stopped by when he got off duty."

But the man at the door was Major Young, who is in charge of the department's community police officers and who is the Police Department's highest-ranking black official.

She was a teenager when they got married.

She had dropped out of high school in 1969, when she was 17, to get married and start a family. Two years later, she and her husband split, and she raised Cornel Young Jr.

"My son lived with me from age 2," she said. "We were close, but he had a relationship with his father.

"We called him Jai. That was the name I wanted him to have. His father wanted him to be named Cornel Young Jr. We went back and forth over it and we joked about it. We named him junior, but all of his friends and members of his family called him Jai."

She worked at menial jobs, but could not make enough money to support herself and her son. She ended up on welfare.

A few years later, she completed a clerical training program at the Urban Education Center in Providence, and got a job as a billing clerk for a local trucking company.

During her two and a half years with the trucking company, she had trouble finding babysitters and transportation. She went back on welfare.

In 1981, when her son was 11, she started taking courses at URI's College of Continuing Education, and five years later she received an undergraduate degree. Later, she received her masters.

Now Leisa Young is coordinator of counseling and advising for over 1,200 students enrolled at the Community College of Rhode Island's Providence campus.

She is also an adjunct professor of psychology and has taught students at both CCRI and the University of Rhode Island's College of Continuing Education in downtown Providence.

Her son was proud, and three years ago he nominated her for the Woman of the Year Award in Education, presented by the Providence YMCA. His role made receiving the award much more meaningful.

"My son nominated me for it," she recalled yesterday. "It was a special thing to me."

Yesterday, she thought about the career he had chosen. And how she had wanted to shield him from the dangers inherent in that work.

"Jai always wanted to be a police officer," his mother said.

"But I was afraid, because he was my only child. I had a strong desire to follow him around and protect him. What I try to console myself with now is that he was doing what he wanted to do."

-With staff reports from Brian C. Jones