Lil Durk’s mother opens up about guilt, grief and motherhood after his acquittal
TheGrio...
LaShawnda Woodard reflected on losing her son DThang and the weight she has carried as a mother in a newly surfaced interview recorded as Lil Durk awaited his verdict.
As Lil Durk begins to navigate the aftermath of his federal murder-for-hire acquittal, an emotional interview with his mother, LaShawnda Woodard, is shedding light on the grief and guilt she has carried for years.
Woodard, known as “Mama Durk,” recently sat down with Amber Grimes for an episode of If You Knew Better with Amber Grimes, where she opened up about motherhood, the death of her oldest son, Dontay “DThang” Banks Jr., trauma and the difficult process of forgiving herself.
The interview was published Sept. 8, just days before a federal jury found Durk, whose legal name is Durk Banks, not guilty on all charges in his murder-for-hire case.
In a clip from the conversation that has resurfaced following the verdict, Woodard spoke candidly about the responsibility she feels for what happened to her children.
“I blame myself for my son getting killed,” she said.
DThang was fatally shot in Harvey, Illinois, in June 2021 at age 32. His death was another devastating loss for the Banks family, which had already experienced years of violence and hardship. Woodard has previously spoken about raising her children on Chicago’s South Side and the challenges she faced as a young mother.
In the interview, Woodard said she often thinks about what might have happened if she had followed the advice her own mother gave her.
“If I would listen to my mom then on what to do and how to do it, how to go finish school, how to get your career going so that you can get out the neighborhood that we’re living in, which is 7220, so I just kept putting it off,” she said.
Woodard said she believes her children could have been raised differently if she had made different decisions.
“If I would have listened like I was supposed to, we would have been somewhere totally different,” she said. “They would have been raised different and I felt like everything would have been better.”
“I take accountability for everything,” she added.
But the nearly hourlong conversation with Grimes makes clear that Woodard’s pain goes beyond her children’s experiences. She discussed becoming a mother as a teenager, her own traumatic experiences, depression, isolation and the lasting impact of grief following DThang’s death.
Grimes repeatedly challenged Woodard’s tendency to turn accountability into self-blame, encouraging her to give herself grace for the circumstances she could not control.
The conversation also touched on Woodard’s experience surviving sexual assault as a teenager and the ways unresolved trauma can affect a person years later. She encouraged other survivors to speak about what happened to them and seek support rather than carrying the pain alone.
Woodard’s reflections take on additional weight following Durk’s acquittal.
On Sept. 11, a federal jury in Los Angeles found the Grammy-winning rapper not guilty of conspiracy, stalking resulting in death and murder-for-hire charges stemming from a 2022 shooting that prosecutors alleged was intended to target rapper Quando Rondo. Rondo’s cousin, Saviay’a Robinson, was killed in the shooting instead.
The case centered on allegations that Durk orchestrated the attack as retaliation for the 2020 killing of his close friend and fellow rapper King Von. Durk’s defense maintained that prosecutors’ cooperating witnesses were unreliable and that Durk was not responsible for the shooting.
The verdict brought an emotional scene inside the courtroom. According to the Los Angeles Times, Durk wiped away tears after hearing the not-guilty verdicts, while India Royale wrapped her arm around Woodard, who was crying.
Still, the acquittal does not mean Durk is immediately returning home. He remains in federal custody while awaiting a separate trial on racketeering and firearms-related charges scheduled for Oct. 5.
For Woodard, however, the verdict arrives during a much larger journey toward healing.
Near the end of her conversation with Grimes, the discussion shifts from everything Woodard believes she did wrong to whether she can allow herself to acknowledge what she did right. Grimes urges her to recognize that she has survived experiences that could have broken her and to begin releasing some of the weight she has carried.
The episode, titled “LaShawnda Woodard Knows the Hardest Person to Forgive Is Yourself,” ultimately becomes less about assigning blame and more about learning to live with grief without allowing it to define the rest of her life.
Now, with her son having secured an acquittal in one of his federal cases, Woodard may have another opportunity to focus on the healing she spoke about before the verdict was ever announced.
As Grimes wrote when sharing the clip, “I hope this verdict brings more healing and peace.”