‘He was my only boy’: Mother of 18-year-old killed in Lincoln shares her sorrow

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Heidi Brave said her son, Damien, was just starting to figure out his life at the age of 18 when he was shot and killed in Lincoln.

“There is no pain in the world like losing a kid,” Heidi said. “He was my only boy.”

Damien Brave was shot at a house party on Friday night.

He died at the hospital around 2:30 a.m.

Now, Heidi just wishes he had more time to grow up.

“He was never too big,” she said. “He would always sit in my lap and put his head on my chest, and I would put my hand on his head so I could rub his head. That was his biggest thing. If I had five more minutes, I would hold him and rub his head, just like he liked.”

Heidi said there were so many things that made Damien special to those he loved.

“He had that smile that everybody wanted to see,” she said. “My thing was his hugs. It was a hug that could make anybody happy no matter how down you were. His goofy little grin. And I don’t think he ever quite grew into his ears. And he had that Alfalfa thing; he always had his hair sticking up.”

Heidi said Damien lived in Lincoln with his father, while she lives in Omaha.

Recently, she was in the hospital and Damien came to visit her.

She said he hugged her and told her that he loved her and would see her later.

That was the last time Heidi saw her son alive.

“I’ve always been big on the whole, ‘See you later; never say goodbye,'” she said. “Because goodbye means forever. He said he’d see me later. I almost just wish we would’ve said goodbye.”

Heidi said Damien didn’t quite know what he wanted to be yet, but when he was younger, he wanted to be all sorts of things, from a firefighter to an entrepreneur to Spider-Man.

“I wish he would have been able to be here longer because he would have been something,” she said. “He was just like any other kid, just confused at first. Didn’t know what he wanted to be, who he wanted to be.”

Heidi said she was in Omaha when Damien was shot and wasn’t able to make it to the hospital in time to see him before he died.

But she said Damien will “always and forever be my hero.”

“You can never tell anybody you love them too much,” Heidi said. “And that’s why. You never know when you might lose them.”