Amaria Jones: Shot Dead While Dancing for her Mom

Amaria Jones dreamed of becoming an attorney one day. But she had plenty of time for that. After all, she was only 13 years old. She had just finished 6th grade at John Hay Community Academy.

When Brandon Wilkerson went to the school to recruit boys for a basketball team, Amara said she wanted to join, too. She wore a jersey: number 12. 

Friends and family called her "Ya-Ya." She loved the color purple. She was a typical little sister to Mercedes Jones, age 27, and three older brothers. She was a fun-loving delight to her mother, Lawanda Jones.

Amaria and her mother  lived on the first floor apartment of a small two-family brick house on the 1000 block of North Leclaire Avenue in South Austin, on the west side of Chicago.

There had been thunderstorms Father's Day weekend of 2020, but the weather had settled as the sun went down on the evening of June 20. The light was fading just after 8:30. Amaria was in the living room, watching TV with her mother. 

Excited about a new dance she'd learned on TikTok, Amaria decided to show her moves to her mother. She got up and started dancing.

That's when a bullet ripped through the window, the TV, and Amaria's throat.

The child fell to the floor. Her stunned mother, spattered herself with broken glass, couldn't make sense of what had just happened. Amaria wasn't dancing any more. She was holding one hand to her throat as blood gushed out. Her other hand was reaching out to her mother.

What in the world had just happened?

Two boys, ages 15 and 16, had been sitting on the porch. A man saw a red laser pointing in their direction from a silver coupe driving by and heard multiple gunshots tear through the night. The 15-year-old boy was shot in the lower back. The 16-year-old boy took a bullet to the leg. They were taken to Mount Sinai hospital, expected to recover.

Amaria was taken to Stroger Hospital, but she had lost so much blood there was nothing anybody could do to save her. She was pronounced dead half an hour later, one of fifteen people to be shot dead in Chicago that weekend. At least five of them, including Amaria and 3-year-old Mekhi James, were children.

Amaria Jones was an innocent child with her whole life ahead of her. The outrage over her death quickly faded for everybody except those who knew and loved her. The stories vanished from the news within a month. Her killer still has not been found and will probably never be brought to justice. 

A Go Fund Me for the family only raised a tad over $1500.

Five years later there's still outrage over George Floyd, who died of a self-inflected fentanyl overdose while in police custody for passing counterfeit money. His death was entirely self-inflicted, the end of a life of a career criminal. There's money and clout to be had by virtue-signaling over the self-inflected death of a thug. There's no money or clout for demanding justice for an innocent child who died at the hands of a thug. 

Anyone with information about Amaria's murder should contact Chicago Police at  (312) 746-8252. Police have released images of the car, believed to be an Infiniti G35 or G37, from which the fatal bullets were fired.

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