Skip to footer

Death of 9-year-old girl adds tragic nuance to Ferguson story

Jamyla Bolden was shot while doing her homework on Tuesday night when someone fired bullets into her home.

|
Jeff Roberson/AP
Ferguson police Sgt. Dominica Fuller speaks during a news conference Thursday, in Ferguson, Mo. Fuller gave an update on the investigation into a shooting that left a 9-year-old girl dead and her mother injured after someone fired shots into their home Tuesday in Ferguson.

Police in Ferguson, Mo., are looking for the person responsible for the death of a 9-year-old girl who was killed when someone fired shots into a home where she was doing her schoolwork.

Jamyla Bolden died Tuesday night while her mother was hit in the leg and brought to a local hospital. It is unclear whether their home was directly targeted or whether the shots were random. The shooting took place just a few blocks from the place where Michael Brown was fatally shot by white police officer Darren Wilson last year, a death that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement and, in Ferguson, protests that occasionally turned violent. 

Following Tuesday’s shooting, police rushed to the scene.

"You have a 9-year-old child on her mother's bed doing homework and a bullet strikes her," Sergeant Dominica Fuller, the first officer to arrive on the scene, said. "Our concern is to get this person off the street."

"As a mother I was hurt," Ms. Fuller, who is also the mother of a 9-year-old, said. "I showed emotion and I cried and said a prayer for her and my heart is still broken."

Thursday evening, more than 200 people, including police officers and Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III, gathered for a vigil honoring Jamyla, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Crime data in Ferguson for 2014 and 2015 are not yet public, but some reports have suggested that the crime rate has begun to rise in recent years.  

A 2014 New York Times analysis of crime data suggested Ferguson's violent crime rate is relatively low compared with surrounding areas.

This report contains material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Death of 9-year-old girl adds tragic nuance to Ferguson story
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0821/Death-of-9-year-old-girl-adds-tragic-nuance-to-Ferguson-story
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe