A Son’s Murder Led Him on a Journey of Faith

Erick Anderson was preparing to go fishing the next day when a neighbor burst into his home in Queens, N.Y., yelling that someone had been hurt and was bleeding outside.

Anderson, who is a nurse, rushed out to see a young man slumped on his side near the curb, blood pooling around him, in their Ozone Park neighborhood.

“He was right there outside our house,” said Anderson. “I rolled him over and saw blood on his chest and a wide look of terror and fear in his eyes. It was my son D’Anthony. He had been stabbed.”

More than three years later and now living with his family in Florida, Anderson still recalls how he applied pressure to the wound and held his son in his arms, — and while giving him CPR, said Erick, “He took his last breath in my mouth, like his spirit [was] leaving.”

A video that is part of the Christian Reformed Church’s new ministry plan called Our Journey features Anderson and his wife, Chantal, telling the story of their son being murdered in late June 2013 on the day before his 20th birthday.

They also talk about how a church in Brooklyn reached out to them and how Sunlight CRC in Port St. Lucie, Fla., has taken them in.

Today both are active in the church, their daughter, Chanelle, attends a school connected to the church, and yet the memory of what happened on that summer day more than three years ago continues to haunt them, especially as the trial for the young man accused of murdering their son will likely begin sometime in March this year.

“My son was stabbed in the heart because of jealousy over a girl. It was so crazy,” said Erick Anderson, who is now a licensed CRC preacher.

“My son was a good boy. He had already passed the test to go into the Marines.”

The Our Journey video in which the Andersons appear comes under the category of Churches Nurturing Disciples and focuses on how the CRC is playing a role in helping churches to be “vibrant communities, radiating grace” and living out “the gospel within and beyond our walls” to nurture “people of all generations as they grow into the likeness of Christ Jesus.”

This has certainly been the case for him, said Erick Anderson, sketching his journey into faith — his spiritual awakening, as he calls it. First, he describes how Reverend Mike from the New Testament Church in Brooklyn was at their side in the aftermath of the murder.

“He was the biggest support that you could possibly imagine,” said Anderson. “Reverend Mike was with us every day.”

Before then, the Andersons attended New Testament Church occasionally, but then Erick came to a crossroads after his son died: either totally turn his back on a God who could allow such horrible things as his son’s death to happen, or step more deeply into belief in God and attend church more often.

He decided to take the path toward God and, during this time as he went to the church and prayed with Reverend Mike, he said he heard God talking to him, not in an audible way but communicating with him nonetheless, and saying, “I want you to speak for me.”

“Wow!” he said. “God wanted me to do that for him.”

Convinced that God had given him direction, Anderson publically embraced Christianity during a service at New Testament Church. But, after that, he and his wife knew they couldn’t stay in Queens; the pain and memories were too sharp and raw.

So they packed up and decided to move to Florida, stopping in various communities in the state to check them out, and eventually landing in Port St. Lucie, a city of about 175,000 people on the Treasure Coast, an area about 100 miles north of Miami on the Atlantic side of Florida.

“We weren’t there very long when Chantal and I were at a Home Depot. We were feeling rough and miserable, and a woman came up to talk to us,” he said. “She told us she never usually did something like that, but that day she felt she had to.”

She was a member of Sunlight CRC and told them about the church and its school. Largely because they were searching for a school for their young daughter, they decided to visit the school. The administrator was friendly and found a way to make room for their daughter in a class.

“They were just being amazing people,” said Anderson. “We thought that this church was really nice and ended up going to a new members class. They had lemonade and cookies. It was really great. This was exactly what we wanted.”

In a relatively short time, Anderson went through a discipleship class that helped to foster the desire planted when God told him he needed to speak on behalf of God. Meanwhile, his two sons, Kyle and Shayne, joined the youth group.

“I became a youth leader and now, after studying for it, I have my license to preach. I have a chance to preach for the youth group service,” said Anderson. “I’m doing what God wanted me to do.”

Also, as he meets every week with a couple of others in the church, he’s praying and wondering if he may play a part at some point in planting a church for Sunlight.

“There are lots of unchurched people in our area. I don’t know what God has for me in the future, maybe to be a pastor,” he said. “All I know is that Sunshine and the CRC have set me on a path of healing.”

At the same time, he said, he struggles with the memory of holding D’Anthony in his arms and that last breath escaping from him.

“Both my wife and I are taking our time. In many ways, we are still in limbo,” said Anderson. “We already know that being at the trial that is coming up is going to tear us apart.”

Chantal Anderson said that it was her son’s death that drove them from New York City, where she had grown up, and the move has been difficult. But it has been worthwhile.

“Tragedy took us here,” she says in the Our Journey video. And yet, she says, “I feel blessed every day. . . . I have my Sunlight family. My husband is following Christianity, and that makes me want to walk beside him, to walk beside him and learn.”

If you and your congregation have a story to tell about your journey towards our desired futures of cultivating leaders, nurturing disciples, working in partnership, or flowing into your community, let us know.