Ja’Shawn Poirier, a 16-year-old Black student from Arlington, Texas, was killed in a school shooting. This particular incident, however, received no national media attention.
According to reports, Ja’Shawn Poirier was killed after a 15-year-old fellow student allegedly attacked a group of students with a long gun. He was shot just 10 minutes after his mother, Roshone Jacob, dropped him off at Lamar High School.
Ja’Shawn Poirier was taken to the hospital, where he died nearly 2 hours later. A graze wound was also sustained by another female student.
“My son didn’t deserve this at all,” Jacob told WFAA. “He didn’t bother nobody.”
The incident occurred a week before the much-publicized attack on the Covenant School in Nashville. However, many have noticed that unlike the latter, Ja’Shawn’s death didn’t make the national news and it didn’t have a candlelight vigil attended by the first lady of the United States. It also didn’t trigger the Members of Congress to provide solutions to make sure no other family experiences this.
In 2023 alone, data shows that 8 students have been fatally shot in K-12 schools, and 5 of those are Black boys in high school. All the victims attended “under-resourced schools in low-income neighborhoods, according to Buzzfeed.
“Far too often we’re not outraged enough as a nation about the fact that school shootings disproportionately impact Black and brown kids,” said Angela Ferrell-Zabala, senior vice president of movement building at Everytown for Gun Safety. “These are schools that are more likely to be chronically underfunded, where children are less likely to receive the support and resources they need to not only succeed in the classroom but to also cope with the trauma of gun violence that’s impacting their communities.”
Moreover, Ja’Shawn’s grieving family remembers him as a quiet but friendly boy. A GoFundMe was set up to help his mother while she is coping with the death of her son. It has so far raised over $29,000.
