A Knoxville, Tennessee family has suffered immeasurable loss not once, not twice, but four times in the last year.
15-year-old Jamarion "Lil Dada" Gillette was a student at Austin-East Magnet High School. On March 10, 2021, he was shot on Cherokee Trail Way in Knoxville, Tennessee. Jamarion was dropped off at a local hospital, where he later died.
“I’m sad. I’m angry because he was a good child and he was going somewhere. He had a whole lot of people that loved him. He was truly loved, his mother told WVLT. “For the rest of our lives, we will be hurt about this.”
Unfortunately, on July 17, 2021, tragedy struck this family again. Jamarion's 36-year-old cousin, Chaka Sligh, the mother of two daughters and one son, was riding in a car with a friend around 3:10 am. A vehicle passed them in the 2700 block of East Fifth Avenue and opened fire on the pair. The friend raced down Central Street and flagged down Knoxville Police officers near Central and Jackson. Chaka was transported to the University of Tennessee Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
Unbelievably, eleven days after Chaka Sligh was killed and four months after Jamarion's murder, their 20-year-old cousin, Martaysha Flack, was found fatally shot in a vehicle in a parking lot of the Holston Oaks Apartments in Knoxville. Martaysha was the mother of a young daughter, was full of life, and she was attending the Paul Mitchell School.
“The family is still recovering from Dada's loss, the family is still recovering from all the other loss that we’ve had going on. Right now, it’s pretty much an emotional roller coaster. I mean there’s a lot of hurt. There’s a lot of anger; there’s a lot of unanswered questions the family wants to know. The question is why,” her cousin, David Gillette, told WATE.
In July 2022, authorities announced they were searching for information on these three men seen in the surveillance photo below around the same time as the 5:00 pm shooting.
Then, in March 2022, Jamarion's 18-year-old brother, Jaqwan Gillette was killed after a shooting in the Dollar General parking lot at 3275 Sutherland Avenue. Jaqwan was found unresponsive near the Sutherland Flats apartment complex moments later. Authorities report he was killed after an attempted robbery, the Knox News reports.
JaQwan's case is the only one solved.
If you have any information to help bring this family some closure, please contact Crime Stoppers at 865-215-7165. Callers can remain anonymous.
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