Bus stop shooting reopens old wounds for families of slain students
By DeAndria Turner
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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (WLKY) — The shooting of a Valley High School student has renewed concerns about violence at Jefferson County Public Schools bus stops.
“Our city is at war,” Nicole Cowherd said.
It has been 2,789 days since Cowherd last saw her son, 18-year-old Richard Harper. When she learned that another Valley High School student had been shot at a bus stop on Beech Street Tuesday, she was taken back to the cold winter day when her son was killed.
“My heart just kept thinking about the mom,” Cowherd said.
Harper was returning to Valley High School after Christmas break in January 2019 when he was shot while waiting at his bus stop. Cowherd said a friend shot him in a dispute involving a girl.
“My son wasn’t at the wrong place at the wrong time, and her child was not at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Cowherd said. “If you cannot stand on the bus stop to go get an education, if it’s not safe, then where can you be?”
Jefferson County Public Schools has about 10,000 bus stops. In the past seven years, two Valley High School students have been shot while waiting at their stops.
Six bus stop shootings have been reported across Louisville since 2019.
In August 2025, Redeja Williams was fatally shot while walking her daughter to a bus stop near West Chestnut and 11th streets. Four days earlier, gunfire at the same stop sent children running for cover.
“It’s just so sad for it to be on her heart, like she misses her mother,” Williams’ grandfather, Bruce Simmons, said. “And I miss my granddaughter.”
Williams’ family is still waiting for justice.
Another family marked a development in its case Wednesday, when one of two men convicted in the September 2021 killing of 16-year-old Tyree Smith was sentenced to 60 years in prison. Smith was killed at a school bus stop.
“I hate that they threw their life away, but I do think accountability needs to be taken,” said Tyree’s mother, Sherita Smith.
Smith and Cowherd have become friends, bonded by the similar circumstances of their sons’ deaths and the grief that followed. Both also supported Williams’ family after her killing.
Seven years after her son’s death, Cowherd said the pain remains.
“I’m not OK,” she said. “My food don’t taste the same no more. The sun don’t shine the same. Life for me every day without my child is not the same.”
Cowherd is now praying that the family of the student shot Tuesday does not experience the same loss.
“My message to the mom is to hold on to God,” she said. “He’s the only one that’s going to get her through this.”
Cowherd said the violence has become a crisis extending far beyond the families directly affected.
“Right now, this is a crisis for our whole city,” she said.
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