Old Colony Memorial Person of 2020: Vedna Heywood
Emily Clark
Special to the OCM
Vedna Heywood was on a school bus with some friends near her home in Florida when two young men spat on them after verbally abusing the bus driver. She said she remembered their faces, how they called her and her friends the “n-word” and other expletives. The teenagers sat frozen, willing the incident to pass.
Her mother complained to the school, but nothing was done.
Two years later, the same two men hurled racial slurs and kicked her friend Luyen Phan Nguyen to death at a party in Coral Springs, Florida, because he was Vietnamese. The men were among five convicted of the brutal murder, which drew a crowd of onlookers who did nothing.