Death and birth unite stabbing victim’s family

LAKE MONTICELLO — The baby with a bend in his ear met his parents for the first time on Jan. 12, 1988, three days after his mother’s 20th birthday.
Joshua Lee Gibson was “as close to perfect as a child could get” in the eyes of Jon Gibson and Christine Dobson, who said she felt like she had grown up with him.
“I loved him from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet,” Dobson said. “He was the very first person I had unconditional love for.”
When Joshua Gibson was 20, he learned he and his girlfriend were having a baby. However, father and son never met. The day Gibson pocketed the paperwork from The Pregnancy Center was the same day that he was stabbed to death — Sept. 30, 2008 —- outside of a Friendship Court apartment.
On a Friday night in November, Jon Gibson and Christine Dobson sat on adjacent couches in Dobson’s Lake Monticello home. They told stories about their son while holding 6-month-old grandson Jason Lee Gibson, waiting for Dobson’s husband, Tommy, to join them in remembering Joshua Gibson.
Joshua Gibson’s death has been devastating for his family, but at the same time, Jon Gibson said, Jason’s birth has brought the family closer together.
“He would be so proud of that,” Jon Gibson said. “He was able to put us together as a unit.”

Joshua’s life

Before he proposed to Christine Dobson, she said, Tommy Dobson asked Joshua Gibson first if it was OK. As Joshua Gibson grew up, his parents said, he became a good-natured, funny boy who gave “really good hugs,” tried to pull pranks on his stepfather and who was so adverse to violence that his football game suffered because he’d run around players instead of tackling them.
Although his family said Joshua Gibson was a good kid, he wasn’t perfect. The family has a series of stories about him that are punctuated by the refrain, “Dad, you’re going to kill me.” Jon Gibson said he tried to chew out his son at the hospital after a misstep sent Joshua Gibson through the attic floor and bouncing into a chair below. But the boy’s charm, as it often did, turned the situation around.
“He said, ‘You didn’t even care that my shoulder’s dislocated,’” Jon Gibson said.

Joshua Gibson’s teenage years were not easy. His family said he stopped living with either of his parents when he was 18, didn’t take medication for his bipolar disorder and developed a drug problem. The situation came to a head when Joshua Gibson stole some of his mother’s checks to sell for drug money, causing her to report the theft to authorities.
According to Albemarle County court records, Gibson was convicted of uttering and two counts of forgery. Christine Dobson said her son was incarcerated from December 2007 to Aug. 12, 2008, during which time he got his GED and found religion through the Good News Jail and Prison Ministry at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. The ministry’s chaplain, Alonzo Minor, said Joshua Gibson seemed open to changing his life and opening himself to religion.
Christine Dobson said she could see a change in her son’s demeanor and posture.
“He always slouched in life,” she said of her son, who was about 5 feet-5 inches and 115 pounds. “When he began to know the Lord, he was just proud.”
Joshua Gibson moved in with his girlfriend after his release. His mother said she thinks that his relationship with God helped him stay straight when he got out of jail and was around his old friends again. Jon Gibson credits his ex-wife for working “extremely hard” to put their son on track.
But validation of Joshua Gibson’s transformation came in an unexpected and horrific way — the toxicology report from his autopsy. He was clean.

Deadly altercation

Lamont Jermaine Blakey was convicted of second-degree murder May 7 in Charlottesville Circuit Court. Witnesses testified that Blakey, who got into an earlier fight after he wouldn’t return his then-fiancée’s keys, got into a fight with some of the men who walked his betrothed home.
Joshua Gibson’s parents said they believe their son, who had friends in the Friendship Court area where he was killed, was with the group of people because he was trying to help get the woman’s keys back.
At one point in the altercation, Blakey went inside and came out with a kitchen knife. Witnesses said Joshua Gibson tripped and was crab-walking away when Blakey stood over him and stabbed him in the chest.
Jon Gibson, who lives in Lynchburg, was at work installing guard rail when his wife, Joshua’s stepmother, called to tell him that something had happened to his son. On the way home, Jon Gibson said he almost took out 14 telephone poles.
Tommy Dobson broke the news to his wife, who said she had a feeling something bad would happen to her son after he got out of jail.
The family had gathered at the hospital when one of them got a call from Joshua Gibson’s girlfriend. She told them that she was pregnant with Joshua’s baby.

Memories abound

Joshua Gibson’s family can go from sobs to raucous laughter in minutes when they talk about him.
They get constant reminders that he is no longer with them. His face adorns his father’s left forearm; the earring he wore the day he was killed is in his father’s left ear.
Tommy Dobson said he walks by a row of pictures of his stepson on the way to the kitchen for his morning coffee. The Dobsons’ Lake Monticello home, which Joshua Gibson helped build, is filled with memories of good times and pranks Joshua tried to pull on his stepfather.
Even Christine Dobson’s Chevrolet Tahoe brings up memories of her son, because it’s the last place she saw him.
“He had bony fingers,” she said, beginning to cry. “We held hands, when he was 20, over the console.”

Since Joshua Gibson’s death, Tommy Dobson said, Joshua’s 11-year-old half-sister, Britney, has been devastated and uninterested in her normal activities. The siblings were close.
“It made her face reality that she is going to lose [her parents] one day, but she doesn’t know when,” Tommy Dobson said of his daughter, who cries when her parents leave. “She had her brother to lean on if no one was there. That innocence was taken away from her.”
Although it is not the same as before, life has gone on for Joshua Gibson’s family. Christine Dobson, who said the families have grown close with the mother of her son’s child, accompanied the woman to her doctor’s appointments and cut the cord when her grandchild was born in April.
When Joshua was growing up, his mother said, he always wanted a nickname. His family called him “Jaybird,” playing off the first letter of his name. His friends later shortened it to “Jay.”
Christine Dobson said she suggested a name for her grandchild to the child’s mother, a request that she honored. She named him Jason, for “Jay’s son.”