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Lawrence Muhammad didn t hear the gunfire outside his family s East Knoxville home that February evening. He didn t know what had happened until he found his son in a state of panic and asked, in a heart-stopping moment: Where s your sister?
Muhammad went outside and found 15-year-old Janaria there, shot and bleeding badly at the bottom of the steps behind their house. He tried to keep her alive, but he couldn t save his daughter.
Janaria was pronounced dead at the hospital Feb. 16, the third of five teenagers to lose their lives to gun violence in Knoxville this year.
Nearly three months later, Janaria Muhammad s killing remains unsolved. So, too, does the March 9 shooting of 15-year-old Jamarion Gillette, who was found late that night by a passerby on the road leading to the University of Tennessee Medical Center. He died overnight from a still-unexplained gunshot wound.