LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS) -- The photos clutched tightly in Juanita Turpin's hands show a young boy smiling for the camera with a bright future ahead of him.
"He's shaken hands with President Obama, went to his inauguration, shaken hands with Muhammad Ali," Turpin said. "He's had a privileged life."
But Turpin said the man who was found shot dead early Saturday morning was unrecognizable from her son in the photos.
"We need to talk about it," she said. "There's a stigma with it. I feel it. Part of me is embarrassed to talk about it."
Louisville Metro Police officers found Darryl Turpin, 26, dead around 3:30 Saturday morning in a home on Grand Avenue.
"It's basically the worst call any parent ever wants to get," Turpin said. "I will never forget it."
Turpin said her son, known by loved ones as DJ, was a smart and charming young man, but struggled with mental illness and possibly with drug abuse. She wants to start a discussion about these challenges that she said took her son down a dark path that ended behind yellow police tape.
"It's very uncomfortable to talk about, but his death is making me come out of that," she said. "We have got to have conversations and talk about it, and more than that, we've got to do something about it."
Turpin said she tried to have DJ treated for mental illness in the past, but was not able to get him admitted for a consultation because medical professionals told her that her son said he was all right.
She said she now wants to work with political leaders, especially Congressman John Yarmuth, to create legislation that would make help more accessible to people and families in need to make sure her son's life won't be defined by its end.
"I'll never have my son again, but if I can keep somebody from going through what I've gone through, the pain, it's enormous," she said.
►Contact reporter Dennis Ting at dting@whas11.com. Follow him on Twitter (@DennisJTing) and Facebook.