To Diamond Belmonte and her blended family of seven brothers, there is no “half” or “step.” Vincent Belmonte was just her brother, bright and loving with a knack for sports, gaming and growing vegetables. He dreamed of becoming a YouTuber and starting a business with his siblings to teach people in Cleveland how to tend their own gardens.
When he was fatally shot by a police officer in East Cleveland, Ohio, during an attempted traffic stop on January 5, 2021, Diamond and her siblings joined in a now familiar ritual. First they mourned, and then they marched to keep Vincent’s case in the spotlight. They reeled when authorities deemed his death justified, and learned to live on together as attention faded and their brother became one of 29 people killed in fatal police shootings in the state that year.
I first met Diamond and her family at Vincent’s funeral and have followed them for more than three years, catching glimpses with my camera of the aftermath we rarely see: the struggle to balance grief with life’s responsibilities, the absence of a loved one, the fight to keep going despite newfound anxieties, the small epiphanies.
“With something that tragic, you really learn a different trauma response,” Diamond said. “And healing from that, it comes in different aspects, in different ways.”
I first sat down to talk with De’Jour Duckworth, Vincent’s stepbrother, in February 2021. He told me he hadn’t been sleeping much. He’d lost 15 pounds in a month. Still, he smiled and laughed as he talked about his favorite memories of Vincent.
Then, De’Jour’s voice went low as he reminded himself that Vincent’s death wasn’t his fault. His last conversation with Vincent, a phone call two days before the shooting, weighed on him. He told Vincent to come spend some time away on the family’s farm about an hour south. Both 19 at the time, they were struggling to navigate the responsibilities of early adulthood and mental health challenges.
“I told him, like, ‘Bruh, your hurt gon’ be gone soon,’” De’Jour said. “I told him that, but it wasn’t like I was wishing death or anything … It’s just, it’s a lot to really process because, shit, like, the system took my brother.”
Vincent’s loved ones were still reeling from his death at this point. Anger and pain hung in the air. As months passed, however, the protests became more like celebrations of Vincent’s life.
For their protest on April 20, 2021, Vincent’s family decided against marching and chanting. This time, they bought dozens of flowers and handed them out to drivers passing by on Euclid Avenue.
Diamond remembered the way Vincent brightened up a room when he walked in. She told me she just wanted to carry on that legacy. She and her mother Nickey Duckworth waved bouquets and ran up to drivers when they stopped in the middle of the street. They told them the flowers were from Vincent.
In October 2021, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced that a Cuyahoga County grand jury declined to indict Larry McDonald, the East Cleveland police officer who fatally shot Vincent.
According to state investigators, McDonald tried pulling Vincent over for a loud muffler. Vincent sped off and crashed the car before running away on foot. McDonald told investigators that Vincent reached for a gun as he was running away. McDonald then fired his weapon, hitting Vincent several times.
McDonald said he accidentally turned off his body camera as he was chasing Vincent, so the exact details of the shooting remain unclear. Police found a gun in Vincent’s hoodie pocket. Yost concluded that McDonald’s use of deadly force was justified.
The news that McDonald would not be indicted for killing Vincent brought back waves of grief for his family. The decision came about a week before Halloween, so instead of protesting again, Diamond decided to organize a “trunk-or-treat” in Vincent’s name.
After Vincent’s death, Diamond said she started having panic attacks. She developed anxiety so bad that she would pick “holes” in the skin on her face. Seeing police cars sometimes made her so angry and nervous that she couldn’t talk.
“Anytime I see police shootings or anything like that, I got to stay off social media, like, don’t watch the news, certain things just to protect me because some things just literally take me to a high anxiety,” she said.
McDonald, the officer who shot Vincent, was back in the news in 2023 when he resigned. At the time, he was one of 18 current and former East Cleveland officers indicted in an investigation into public corruption and civil rights violations. McDonald, for his part, was charged with lying about his role in a pursuit that resulted in a crash. In April, he was again indicted in a separate crash that was fatal. He pleaded not guilty and told me he did not have a comment on his ongoing case.
Even though McDonald wasn’t indicted for killing Vincent, Diamond and her family believe their protests helped shed light on systemic issues at the East Cleveland police.
I joined the family for a Memorial Day cookout this year at Diamond’s house. She kept a close eye on a rack of ribs on the grill as she told me how Vincent’s death changed her relationships with her brothers.
“I thought I knew all my brothers,” she said. “I realized, after Vinny died, I didn’t know none of them for real, not like how I thought I did. And then I got to spend time with everyone for real, like the one-on-ones. That made me appreciate our relationships a bit more.”
This year has been a little better for Diamond.
“Even after everything, I still got PTSD,” Diamond said. “For the first two-and-a-half to three years, I didn’t really come outside like that. This is the first year that I’ve been like, really outside living more like a normal person.”
Diamond’s birthday falls just a few days after Vincent’s, so she celebrates him each year at her own birthday parties. Vincent would have turned 23 this year. She will still have a party for him, she said, but she wants to celebrate herself, too.
“It’s okay to be grieving,” Diamond said. “But how long will you let grief overcome you? You will become grief. You will be sad about everything. You will be depressed. It will change you. You won’t even know who you are by the end of it. And at some point, do you love that person more than you love you? You still got to live. Life doesn’t stop. You just got to relearn it a different way.”
