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Family, Friends Of Jada Page Ask The Community To Turn In Her Killers

Charles Trainor Jr.
/
Miami Herald
The mother of Jada Page, Rosalind Brown, attends a rally for her slain daughter on NW 95th Street, to call for justice in the drive by shooting death of 8-year-old Jada Page, September 5, 2016.

Just days after 8-year-old Jada Page died from a gunshot woundto the head in a drive-by shooting, funeral home director Lori Hadley Davis embalmed her niece’s tiny body.

On Monday, just one day shy of what would have been Jada’s 9th birthday, instead of celebrating at Rapids Water Park as planned, Davis and the rest of Jada’s family, along with hundreds of supporters, rallied in northwest Miami-Dade under a persistent rainstorm, demanding that the shooters turn themselves in.

“How do you stand over your niece’s body and prepare for the ground?” said Rebecca Vaughns, a local activist and poet, referring to Davis, who wept beside her.

“How do you do it? How do you do it with your eyes open?”

Just before 5 p.m. on Aug. 28, Jada and her father, James Page, 32, were in his Northwest Miami-Dade front yard — on their way to the movies — when they were both shot. Jada, who stood near the front porch, was struck in the back of the head; her father, in the chest. Jada was pronounced brain dead and died two days later.

“You’re killing innocent kids; harmless, full of life, full of joy. For the coward, whoever you are, you, who pulled the trigger, turn yourself in for a sense of peace,” said Santonio “Blaze” Carter, who lost his 6-year-old son, King Carter, to gun violence in February.

“Me and my wife had to have my son’s birthday at a graveyard. We had five cases of balloons and ice cream at a graveyard, praying that another family won’t have to endure this pain. Yet we’re standing here with Jada Page’s birthday tomorrow. I’m tired of being Martin Luther King. It’s time to be Malcolm X.”

Rally organizer and activist Valencia Gunder — who is also Jada’s godmother — said the family is convinced that “the killers, or those who know who the killers are, are still out there.”

“The police are trying, but we are asking the community to give us answers too,” Gunder said. “I hate to admit it, but we need to start doing some self-evaluations. Certain individuals know and we need them to come forward and start talking. We know somebody knows something.”

Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald. 

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