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When he was 13, Donovan Lewis picked up a megaphone and recited a poem at a rally for Black lives outside City Hall in Columbus. The protest was organized by the People’s Justice Project to focus attention on the deaths of Black people at the hands of police. In a photo from that day, Donovan is standing in the back row, a head above most of the serious-faced kids, his fist in the air. They hold signs that read “Black Lives Matter” and “R.I.P. Henry Green” but also a simple plea, “Don’t Shoot People!”
Five years later, Donovan was on High Street marching in protest of the murder of George Floyd, just one of thousands of his generation across this country to do so during the summer of 2020. He understood, physically and emotionally, what it was like to be stopped by police, to feel as though your life was not your own anymore. There was the time he was pulled over with his brother, the time he was making a rap video at a friend’s house, the time he was in a car with friends and there was a gun, and the times his own mental health issues controlled him—he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 13, says his mother, Rebecca Duran.
In the spring of 2020, during his senior year at Westerville Central High School, Donovan read the novel “The Hate U Give” with the guidance of teachers Katie Cress and Amanda Miller-Rudolph. It’s a coming-of-age story told by an insightful 16-year-old named Starr Carter, who is raised by working-class parents in an underserved neighborhood where gang violence and police brutality are a part of life—and yet she attends a private school with mostly white students. In the earliest pages, Starr and her friend Khalil are pulled over by a police officer who shoots and kills her friend. Starr mourns his death and, ultimately, channels her sadness and anger into a plea for change, picking up a megaphone, just like Donovan had.
Reading “The Hate U Give” was like looking into a fire and seeing his face in the flames. In a journal he kept while reading the book, Donovan wrote that Khalil should have made his hands visible to the police officer and spoken calmly as Donovan’s own mother had told him time and again. He wrote about feeling a lot like Starr who, despite living in an underserved community, attends a mostly white private school. Like her, he had moved neighborhoods late in high school for a better education. Like her, he had to wrestle with being an outsider. Like her, he had to grapple with the limits of American democracy. Like her, he protested.
Then, last August, Donovan Lewis became Khalil.
➽ Donovan Latrell Lewis was born on May 14, 2002, in Columbus to Rebecca Duran, who is white, and Daryl Lewis, who is Black. His parents separated when he was 1, and for most of his life, he lived with his mom. Donovan grew up with his older sister and brother, as well as three younger siblings.
As a child, Donovan was always 100 percent himself. He’d wear a Batman mask and cape all the time, even when he was 10, Rebecca says. One time, he wanted to wear it to his friend’s house, and she worried that his friend might make fun of him. He told her matter-of-factly that his friend thought it was cool, too.
Rebecca says he could be brutally honest, which sometimes created conflict. In that, she says they were a lot alike. Even as a kid, she says, when he didn’t agree with something, he would tell you. And changes were always hard for Donovan. Rebecca says he tried to walk off all the frustrations, anger and anxiety. He walked whenever he could. He walked everywhere because he never owned a car, but also because he needed to get all his energy out. He played football (linebacker). He boxed. Loved rapping. Loved learning new things and cherished his time at the University District Freedom School summer literacy program. But mostly, she says, he walked. He was always wearing out shoes and socks.
Donovan started high school at Mifflin in Northeast Columbus, and then the family moved to Westerville, where Donovan transferred to Westerville Central for his junior year. It was a change, another place to fit in. In his journal, he writes, “I feel like in reality people are going to be mean and make you feel like an outcast, and that even if you try, you are always going to feel like you belong in one world more than the other.”
Despite feeling out of place, to some folks who knew him in high school, it seemed like he was thriving. An intervention specialist named Katie Cress took to Donovan. She says Donovan’s student file painted a picture of a kid she’d need to watch closely—but that wasn’t the kid she met.
A few weeks into the school year, a girl in his contemporary literature class made a comment that triggered him. Donovan and the girl stood up. Things were heading south quick, and Katie stepped in front of the girl. Then, she says, something strange happened. Donovan just stopped and walked out of the classroom. Katie followed. He turned around in the hallway, and she remembers him saying, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I know that was disrespectful. I didn’t mean to walk away from you.”
He was putting his hands on his head, frustrated, flustered. He thought he was going to get suspended, but she told him that she was here to support him, that she was proud he just walked away. He seemed surprised that an adult wasn’t out to get him.
“If other people could walk away from situations and just pause and think for a second, the world would be such a better place,” Katie says.
She can’t imagine that the move to Central was easy for him, but it seemed to work. He bonded with his football team. Connected with counselors and teachers. Had lots of friends. Katie remembers a young man who was always sticking up for others, a social butterfly involved in other people’s lives.
As a student, he always had something to say. “When he’d get on his soapbox, he’d go. And we’d let him go.” He taught her so much, she says, especially around issues of social justice.
“He was a joy … even when he had hard times. He just cared about people so much,” Katie says. After a pause, she adds, “I don’t know if he finally felt like he had people on his side.”
In his journal, Donovan offers a glimpse into his world, about what it’s like to show up in a different school, to be from the “inner city” and then go to a “suburban school.” He writes that he felt frustrated with some of his more privileged peers. He said he realized he had to just be himself: “People started getting mad and started fights and altercations with me. It frustrated me that they would just throw away food or seem ungrateful for all they have, or would try and act like they know what it is like and try to act like thugs, be hard and act tough, but in reality they wouldn’t last a day in my shoes.”
The way his mother tells it, Donovan started struggling in school the next year—getting into arguments, making the wrong decisions. His grades slipped, and he became ineligible for the football team. He stopped going to school. Duran says his behavior was disrupting home life, and so she made the difficult decision to put him in foster care. She stayed deeply involved, though, helped him get to appointments, brought him food and clothes, had him over for meals.
During that year, Donovan started working with a tutor through the school district named Amanda Miller-Rudolph. Her job was simple: help him graduate. They met once a week and worked through his lessons—from math to literature, they did it all. Like Katie, Amanda took to him immediately. She says he was kind, funny, outgoing, honest and always respectful toward her. She wanted him to succeed despite what he faced as a young Black man.
Katie assigned “The Hate U Give,” and so Amanda and Donovan would sit for hours reading the book together, sometimes listening to an audiobook version. He connected at every turn, Amanda says. At one point, the narrator posts a photo of Emmett Till on social media, and Amanda says she was ashamed to say that she’d never heard about him. So Donovan told her all about Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy lynched in Mississippi after being accused of offending a white woman.
Toward the end of the school year, Donovan stopped returning her calls. She showed up at his mom’s house on his birthday and gave Donovan a pair of Los Angeles Lakers socks—he was obsessed with Kobe Bryant—and a lecture. He was so close to graduation, she told him, and she wanted to help him make it through. And she did. She watched him get his diploma during a drive-up, COVID-era ceremony. In a photo from that day, they’re both smiling, the bright blue sky and spring green surrounding them.
“Sometimes I had to get him to work,” she says grinning, “but he was a 17-year-old boy!”
Amanda tutors kids of all ages who have been suspended or who are out for medical reasons. You get attached, she says. You meet one-on-one, get to know them. One child she worked with had cancer and died last summer. A month later, she lost Donovan.
➽ Josiah Oyortey, whose stage name is Yung Siah, met Donovan in an algebra class at Central. But they really connected while working on a Black history month show full of singing, dancing and spoken word performances. The two friends shared a love of hip-hop and used to have rap battles together.
Like Donovan, Josiah loved “The Hate U Give”—never read anything like it. Felt deeply engaged in class discussions about it. Felt seen. Connected to characters being surveilled and policed. He says he’s been stopped dozens of times, once while riding his bicycle home from school with his brother.
When he heard author Angie Thomas was coming to his school, he was thrilled. And then when she rapped at the end of her talk, he decided he was going to share a rap with her in response. He was nervous as he waited in line with his friends, but they encouraged him, pushed him to go through with it.
In the video his friends took, you can see him move up to a table where a smiling Thomas is signing books. In a gray hoodie and jeans, he slides his copy of “The Hate U Give” across the table and says, all shy-like, “Miss Angie, you actually inspired me to write this song, and I want to share something with you.”
He lets loose a cascade of words: “So we just wanna be free / And we’re balling up our fists because Martin had a dream/ They had us picking up the cotton, bodies hangin’ from the trees / All we ever had was hope / Had us breaking off the chains because they ain’t never given us a key….”
He talks about police violence. About Trayvon Martin. About wanting justice from a system that exonerates police who kill Black people. And he ends, “There’s a difference in how you speak and how you act / I’m gonna fight until it’s right. And that’s a fact.”
A crowd of onlookers cheer.
Thomas shared the video on Instagram and wrote, “This young king, @yuungsiah, blew my mind last night. If he’s the future of hip-hop, it’s in good hands.”
Looking back, he says, the way she responded with love and support empowered him. But he still cringes a little. “I would do it again but better,” he says with a laugh.
After high school, Josiah and Donovan stayed connected through their ups and downs. When Donovan was emancipated from foster care, he was homeless and couch surfed, staying mostly with a former foster mom and friends. Eventually, through Star House, an organization for youth experiencing homelessness, he got an apartment.
But Donovan struggled with his mental health and ended up on probation after an altercation with his mom and stepdad. His mom hoped that would put him in a place to find the help he needed, but it only complicated his life. On another occasion, a car he was in was pulled over, and there was a gun in the car. It was not his. The other person ran but Donovan did not. He told his mother later that he didn’t want the police to shoot him in the back as he was running away.
Despite these hurdles, Donovan had ambitions. He was still rapping and would often pay for studio time even when he was couch surfing and between jobs. And he was hoping to go to trade school to study HVAC. He was in a relationship and learned that he would soon become a father.
Josiah was attending Central State University, and it wasn’t what he wanted or where he wanted to be at the time. He moved back to Columbus to attend Columbus State and study marketing. The whole time, though, they would text or talk on the phone regularly. They prayed together, talked about God and Scripture.
Because of his lived experiences, Donovan gave Josiah a different perspective on the world. One time, Josiah was stuck on a phrase that he kept hearing young people say: “Die for my respect.” Josiah said that sentiment never sat right with him, and he was trying to work his response to that phrase into a song he was writing. He called Donovan.
“I said to him that we’re here to live for God, and then Donovan said, ‘We’re not here to live for the approval of man.’ ”
On March 31, 2022, they were texting about high school when Donovan wrote that he remembers how young people looked up to Josiah then, that maybe a lot of young people looked up to him, as well, but he let them down.
“I could’ve showed them better no matter what I was going through,” Donovan texted. “I told them good stuff, but my actions weren’t consistent enough.” And then a short text after that one, “A part of growth.”
➽ In the bodycam video from Aug. 30, 2022, an officer stands to the right of the door of Apartment H on the second floor of the complex at 3295 Sullivant Ave. on Columbus’ West Side. Columbus police are there to serve several warrants issued for Donovan.
It’s around 2 a.m.
“Apartment H!” an officer shouts, then says, “If I have to come in there and get you, you’re going to get tazed.”
There are muffled voices, and then the door opens. “My hands are up,” a young man says. “I’m not Donovan.” He says they were asleep. Two Black men come outside and are cuffed by white police officers. They sit down on the ground to the right of the door.
Three officers, including a K-9 officer with 30 years of experience named Ricky Anderson, enter the apartment. Anderson lets the German shepherd search off-leash. The dog barks loudly as it circles the front room of the tiny apartment. There’s a small kitchen in the back and a door to the left, which becomes the focus of the dog’s attention.
Donovan is on the other side of that door. Was he scared? Was Donovan thinking about Trayvon? About Khalil?
An officer shouts, “We’re gonna send the dog in!” A few seconds pass. Officer Anderson opens the door to Donovan’s room. The other two yell for him to come out, and then, almost in the same moment, we see Donovan on his bed, shirtless with hands up. Anderson fires a shot in his direction. The dog barks. The officers shout, “Hands! Hands!” and “Crawl out!” and “I need cuffs!”
Donovan rolls around on the bed, legs moving, moaning. He doesn’t hold a weapon—and none was found in his room, just a vape pen. “Stop resisting!” an officer shouts as they cuff him on the bed in his tiny, spartan bedroom: a mattress on a frame, some clothes in a hamper, a window A/C unit. It’s simple, but it’s his apartment, his own space. His first.
Lewis was the third person Columbus police had shot in about a week. According to Police Scorecard, the first data-driven nationwide police evaluation system, Columbus police kill people at higher rates than almost all other U.S. police departments in cities of 250,000 or more. Almost three-fourths of those killed in Columbus are Black—and more than half of those arrested are Black. But only 30 percent of Columbus’s nearly 900,000 residents are Black.
Officers then carry Donovan past his two friends, who were still sitting there in cuffs. Police drop Donovan on the way down the stairs—one officer says he can’t get a grip—but eventually set him down on some grass. Neighbors watch from the balcony above as officers perform CPR. One officer says they should take the cuffs off when EMS arrives. Donovan moans. At one point his eyes open briefly.
Across town, Rebecca Duran races to Donovan’s apartment after learning about the shooting. When she arrives at Sullivant Avenue, shaking and crying, Rebecca asks officers where her son is. Rocking back and forth, she says, “I just want to know what hospital he’s at… if he’s still alive and if I can see him.”
Donovan was declared dead at 3:19 a.m. at Grant Medical Center from that single shot fired by officer Anderson. The bullet entered his right lower abdomen and passed through his body, grazing an artery and vertebra before resting in the pelvis. That is where a pathologist at the Franklin County Forensic Science Center recovered a copper-jacketed bullet with a deformed tip during a postmortem exam less than seven hours after Donovan died.
His body was transported to Marlan J. Gary Funeral Home where, finally, Rebecca Duran said goodbye to her son.
➽ When I contacted author Angie Thomas for this story, she told me she had never heard about Donovan—a fact that makes her angry. Thomas has had countless young people talk about how they connected with the book—that they see themselves in the characters and their experiences. But she has never had someone connected like this.
She hates that the book came true. That this young man’s name now enters the list of those killed and not a list of activists or advocates. That he became Khalil and not Starr. She always hoped the book would become irrelevant, that one day young folks would read it and wonder how such things had ever happened.
“And hearing about Donovan,” she says, “makes me wonder, am I foolish for dreaming that my book will become irrelevant?”
For Rebecca, Katie, Amanda, Josiah and for all of Donovan’s friends, the book’s message resonates across time and space in a way that profound literature can, but also in a way that is painful beyond its words. Katie says she knows this happens a lot, but it lands differently when it’s your student. “A kid you have taught this to and who has taught you about this—and then his friends having to deal with this.”
Thomas says the book is a personal story about a young girl navigating the aftershock of police brutality, but it is also a story about the ripple effects of that brutality. The title reinforces that message. It comes from an acronym for the phrase “Thug Life,” coined by rapper Tupac Shakur. It means, he said, “The hate you give little infants f—- everyone.”
“And then we expect them,” Thomas says, “to become leaders and functioning members of our society who aren’t walking around with a form of PTSD, because they are.”
The truth she tells in this book is the ripple effect of the police killing, how it traumatizes a young woman, how it disrupts a community, washing over everyone who comes near. She puts the reader in this place and humanizes the experience, humanizes the people affected by this violence and, she hopes, fosters empathy.
There’s power in writing from a place of empathy, she says. This is why people are pushing to ban her book in places like Martin County, Florida, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, pushing to ban books about people of color or LGBTQ+ people. Such books, she says, “show different experiences. They show different lives, and [some people] are afraid of their kids learning what it’s like to be a Black person in America and learning that maybe, just maybe, things need to change.”
When Thomas speaks to young people, she tells them they have power. “They’re some of the most powerful people in the world. … Young people like Donovan who are deciding, ‘You know what? I’m going to hit the streets. I’m going to make myself heard. I’m going to speak up and speak out.’ That’s where my hope lies.”
➽ Officer Ricky Anderson retired with his pension. Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation turned over its investigation on Dec. 5, 2022, and on Friday, Aug. 4, 2023—just under a year after Donovan’s killing—the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office announced that a grand jury had indicted Anderson on murder and reckless homicide charges. Meanwhile, Rebecca filed a civil suit, which is moving forward. And in March, Donovan’s son was born.
Josiah says that he’s not sure he’s over the rage he first felt when he learned that Donovan had been killed. He didn’t have a chance, he says. “This happened here in Columbus. This could have been my brother. This could have been my little cousin.”
He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to. But it could have been him.
Like Donovan, Josiah protested during the summer of 2020, but now he wonders if protest will change anything. His actions contradict his words. He’s invested in the struggle. In a song he wrote about Donovan called “Holding On,” he writes, “Too many bodies we buried over time / Too many people saw a ladder they didn’t get to climb / Too many had a light that they ain’t event get to shine.”
It’s an angry track, full of anxiety, fear and sorrow. He’s shouting, almost. The line he worked out with Donovan pierces through: “I’d rather live for God than ever risk it all and die for my respect/ I don’t need approval from a man/ I know I’m blessed.”
And then:
Been thinking about how,
Sick and foolish, the dirty fingers that pull it,
They crept up on him at night,
Killers ready to do it.
The dog was ready to bite,
Bro was sleep in a room and
they shot him right in his stomach,
his name was Donovan Lewis.
He had influence.
A couple of years ago he was a student
had dreams to make it out but
they made sure that that was ruined.
And they ain’t even held accountable
for what they doing.
It’s more than proven.
They steady pulling us down to the ground
and we losing.
The beat drops out, and all we hear is his voice, with a bit of delay, full of righteous sadness, fear and a desire to lift Donovan’s name:
And if you say his name, say it loud and proud or don’t say it at all…
Would hate to see another one of us fade in the fog…
Just be yourself, like Don said…
Spread your wings, and we gonna fly in the rain.
In his journal, Donovan responds to a prompt about hashtags used in “The Hate U Give,” asking students to imagine what their hashtag would be. Donovan explores the significance of a few used in the novel, including #RIP, which he writes “stands for ‘Rest in Peace’ and is used to remember and give respect to people who have passed away and share a hope that they are now in a better place. ”
Then he writes that if he had one, it would be #BeYourself.
“I think this is important,” he writes, “because too many people try to be something they are not. If you are not yourself, then people won’t like and get to know you for who you really are. I want to be known as someone who is passionate about music, someone who likes sports, is smart and has a good sense of humor. That is who I am and will always be.”
This story is from the August 2023 issue of Columbus Monthly. It has been updated to include the indictment of Columbus police officer Ricky Anderson in the shooting death of Donovan Lewis.
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