She lost one son to violence. Now she's fighting to keep her other two alive

LOS ANGELES — In Latasha Bracks' Watts living room, a cluttered shrine to her three sons and three daughters sits atop a waist-high pedestal near the front window.

There are framed photos of their smiling faces and artifacts from their lives, including her 18-year-old son Pierre Monroe's high school diploma and basketball trophies.

Rising above the keepsakes is a gleaming silver-and-blue urn, shaped like an oversize egg in an egg cup.

"That's my baby," Bracks said one winter afternoon, gesturing toward the metal vessel. "His ashes are in there."

Tashon Logan, her eldest son, was shot to death at age 19 on March 31, 2019 — less than four hours before rapper Nipsey Hussle was gunned down in front of his South Los Angeles store.

She is not the first mother to bear the weight of raising children in a tough neighborhood with more gangs and guns than opportunity. But hers is an uncommon common story, one of atonement and second chances.

Bracks is a 47-year-old single mother and recovering addict who lived for two years in a rescue mission and a string of flophouses before finding a stable home