LINC families, communities suffer violence

Jenna L. Nava, mother of 4, killed by gun violence, 2022

Three of Nava’s four daughters were nearby when an altercation at her Kansas City apartment turned violent Jan. 25. They called 911, but their mother died at the age of 35. The family were part of LINC’s Caring Communities at Hickman Mills’ Millennium at Santa Fe Elementary School.

The youngest daughters, in Fifth and First grade, attend LINC’s before- and after-school program. It has been hard on girls and difficult for their schoolmates as everyone deals with the tragedy, said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Mindia Stephenson.

“I try to stand in between,” Stephenson said. “I tell them, ‘Come talk to me. I’m here for you.’”

The school community has sent gift baskets and gift cards and done other things to support the family. Every day, Stephenson said, she and others try to take special care with the daughters.

“We are all we have, all of us,” she said. “This is us. You never know all that’s going on in someone’s life.”

Nava was an enthusiastic mother who also frequently helped take care of her friends’ kids, her friend, Shabrielle Law, told Fox 4 TV. Now they want to help make her daughters safe.

“All we can do is be there for them,” Law said. “It’s tough because they’re so young and I don’t’ think they’ve really processed it but it’s going to be a long road ahead of us.”

Andrea Dean, mother of 3, killed by gun violence, 2021

Three children had to run to a neighbor’s house to get help after they said an argument between their parents ended when their father fatally shot their mother, 32-year-old Andrea Dean, June 13.

The children are students at Kansas City’s Faxon Elementary School and part of LINC’s Caring Communities. Dean was killed just as the Kansas City community had begun a “21 Days of Peace” movement to try to bring attention to the violence that has worsened through the pandemic.

Dean was a nursing assistant, beloved by her clients, and the mother of two sons and a daughter, ages 9, 8 and 5, who told Channel 41 TV she was “the best mom in the world.”

LINC’s team has helped support and nurture the children, Faxon Caring Communities Coordinator Yolanda Robinson said. In a tender moment, the children sang a favorite song with a microphone in the school’s gym during LINC’s annual Lights On Afterschool celebration in October 2021. Dean’s 8-year-old son had planned to sing at a talent show before the tragedy. There is a lot of healing that must happen, Robinson said.

“Looking at this trauma” that so many people endured, Robinson said, “this was symbolic to me. I said, ‘Give me a song,’ and finally he had the nerve to do it. He did it.”

Terrell Bell, 15, killed by gun violence, 2021

One more time, Terrell Bell came looking for LINC’s Bryan Geddes, “chipper as usual,” Geddes said.

How’s your summer treating you? What are your plans? Come see me!

That was Monday, June 7 — just a short conversation outside Geddes’s Ruskin High School office. They were going to talk again soon, same as they did back at Smith-Hale Middle School, where Geddes also serves as Caring Communities Coordinator, and where Terrell was one of the students who frequently took Geddes up on his offer to share lunch in his office. “Just to talk about life,” Geddes said.

But by mid-afternoon Tuesday, June 8, police responding to a report of a shooting found Terrell dying from a gunshot wound in nearby Sycamore Park. He was 15.

Now Kansas City’s struggle with gun violence bears down on the Hickman Mills School District community and on the many of the LINC staff and students Terrell knew.

Those casual lunches and the standing invitation to LINC’s open-door offices often became mentoring sessions — meaningful time together that now feels like it has slipped away.

“It’s disheartening, all this potential,” Geddes said. “He touched so many people. We all were rooting for him. You speak so much encouragement, breathe in the positive, so many great things into him, and his life was cut short.”

Terrell was tall and strong, a football player at Ruskin High School. Now a sophomore, he had already graduated from LINC’s program, which goes through the ninth grade. But he frequently came by to visit the LINC staff he’d known since elementary school.

“He always loved his LINC people,” said Jene Counts, the LINC Caring Communities Coordinator who was in charge of Terrell’s LINC program at the now-closed Symington Elementary School.

“He had a lot of support from his teachers and his LINC staff.”

Brian Bartlett, 8, killed by gun violence, 2019

Brian was just days away from starting the fourth grade at Center Elementary School and LINC’s Caring Communities after-school program.

The child was killed as he slept Saturday night, Aug. 10, when a barrage of gunfire ripped through his family’s house in the 8300 block of Tracy Avenue. His mother was wounded. Investigators still have no suspects or know of any motive for the shooting, police said.

“This young man lost his life for no reason whatsoever,” said LINC Caring Communities Site Coordinator Richard Williams.

Williams remembers now “an exceptional young man” and the soft dimples of his round, smiling face.

He remembers the boy’s mother, delivering him to school, taking him home — returning into the neighborhood around the south Kansas City Caring Communities site that Williams said sees too much violence and stress.

“He was quiet, unassuming,” Williams said. “A smart young man. My heart is broken.”

Jazmine Hall, 7, wounded by gun violence, 2019

Jazmine, a LINC Caring Communities student at Holliday Montessori, survived a shooting that killed her older brother, Zavien Hall, 17, when gunfire erupted in an argument Aug. 21 outside a home at 44th Street and Cyprus Avenue.

Six bullets struck Jazmine where she had been playing nearby.

Officers responding to the shooting found Zavien lying in the front yard with several gunshot wounds. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The gunman fled in an unknown direction.

After the shots were fired, a neighbor chased the shooter but was unable to catch him, according to an account by The Kansas City Star.

“Why did you shoot him? Why?” his grandmother, Jannie Hall, said of the shooter, speaking to The Star. “You killed my great-grandson, for what reason? What could he have done to you that was so bad. What was it?”

“It has hit us very deeply,” Hall cried as she spoke about losing Zavien. “My granddaughter, a little person, 7 years old, you shot her six times. Son, what was wrong with you?”

“They picked her up and put her in the car and rushed her to the hospital and by the time the law got there Zavien had taken his last breath,” she said. “What could they have done to you?”

Demonte Walker, 15, killed by gun violence, 2018

Demonte was a teenager in LINC’s youth in transition programming that helps teenagers under the care of Missouri’s Division of Youth Services gain skills and prepare for independent living as they approach adulthood.

He and his 16-year-old friend, Jeremiah Stewart, were fatally shot June 25 in the 3600 block of Wabash Avenue.

Mentors who were helping Demonte, as well as staff at Spay and Neuter Kansas City, remembered him as a teenager who was working hard to order his life, improve his schoolwork, while taking great care to properly raise a dog he got as a puppy named Chops. He had been mowing yards to earn money to help pay for the cost of caring for his dog.

"It hurts so much to see how gun violence is taking these young lives," one of his mentors, Nesha Smith, wrote on Facebook. “One of the most difficult parts of working in a school is hearing that a child with their entire life ahead of them has it stolen. This has to stop. Life is so precious."

Dominic Young Jr., 9, killed by gun violence, 2018

Dominic was in the third grade at Ingels Elementary in the Hickman Mills School District. Dominic was fatally shot late by a stray bullet in the middle of a rolling gun battle between two vehicles late in the night Jan. 20 near the area of Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard and U.S. 71, Kansas City police said.

On Jan. 26, students, family and community members came together to celebrate the life of Dominic with a balloon release and recognition of the day going forward as Dominic's Day.

Dominic was shot after the car Dominic’s father was driving was hit by gunfire from two other vehicles that were engaged in a gunfight. The father told police he did not immediately realize his son, Dominic, had been shot.

The boy’s father was driving his two sons home to Grandview after spending the day roller skating, bowling and playing video games during a family outing.

The child was in Grandview when police were called, and officers found him in critical condition. He was taken to a hospital and was later pronounced dead.