As more NC teens die from gunfire, more parents plunge into nightmares with no escape
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Gun violence in North Carolina
As more North Carolina teens are killed by gunfire, more parents are plunged into nightmares with no escape.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This reporting is part of ongoing News & Observer coverage about gun violence, its impact on families and communities and relevant public policy.
Jim and Laura Baker were in bed watching television when they heard the doorbell ring and a knock on the front door around 10 p.m.
Jim, in his pajamas, pulled on a robe. When he opened the door, a Raleigh Police detective stood in front of him, holding a cell phone.
A body had been found in a car registered to the Bakers, the detective said.
“What?”Jim Baker said as Laura reached the door.
He immediately thought of his daughter. Where was Veronica? “Who’s in the car?” he asked.
After looking at a text on his phone, the detective asked if a tattoo with the number 2002 meant anything to them.
Then they knew. Laura was mad when Veronica got that tattoo, a tribute to the year she was born.
“Not my baby. Not my baby,” Laura screamed, so loud that two neighbors in the Baker’s tight-knit southeast Raleigh neighborhood came running to their doorstep.
Youth violence climbs
Veronica Baker’s murder and the arrest of a 17-year-old charged in her killing occurred in August 2020, when the number of youths accused of homicides across the U.S. jumped compared to recent years.
In the U.S. and North Carolina, arrests of teens and those even younger had been on the decline for years, but recent national and state statistics show increasing incidents involving kids, crime and guns.
“We are seeing the early warning signs of an uptick in juvenile crime, which we have not seen in North Carolina in a long time,” said William Lassiter, deputy secretary for the state Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
From 2012 to 2021, the rate of North Carolina youth killed by firearms rose from 1.6 to 5.3 per 100,000 minor-aged residents, according to data from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. The rate for those ages 15, 16, and 17 rose from 8.6 in 2019 to 21.5 in 2021.
From 2019 to 2021 the number of minors killed by guns more than doubled to 121. The deaths in 2021 include about 30 suicides and 12 accidental killings. Shootings stole the most lives.
With this, more families are dragged into the nightmare of life after losing a child to gun violence. Each story is unique, but many facets of their hellish journeys are alike.
Hopes and dreams of prom, college and careers are replaced with visits to graves on birthdays and annual “death days.”
They wonder how they could have been better parents, learn to live with the idea that killers can eventually walk free and slowly absorb that they will never see their children again.
And so much more awfulness.
‘Baby, come home’
Jim and Laura Baker last saw Veronica earlier on that rainy August day.
They were pulling out of their driveway to go shopping in Smithfield as she was pulling in.
“Hey baby, let’s go to the mall,” said Jim, who owns a mobile RV repair business.
“We just went there Daddy,” she replied.
“I love you,” Jim said.
“I love you, too,” she said.
Laura had texted Veronica, 17, their youngest of two daughters around 7:30 p.m. after they had returned from shopping.
“Baby, come on home,” she wrote.
Veronica, then a recent graduate of Garner High School, was getting something to eat and would be home soon, she replied.
At 7:33 p.m., surveillance video showed Veronica Baker parking her Honda Accord at a Bojangles on Jones Sausage Road in Garner, according to a state medical examiner report. At 8:15 p.m. a passerby saw her slumped over.
Emergency responders found her dead in her sedan, after a bullet traveled through the middle of her chest and heart, exiting out her upper back.
The night they found out, the Bakers wanted to go to Veronica immediately, but police and medical examiner officials said it wasn’t possible. Unable to absorb what had happened, they were worried about their baby all alone with strangers in a strange environment.
Arrests made
In the days after police found Veronica Baker dead in her car, they arrested four people on charges related to her murder.
Devin Cordell Jones, then 17, was charged with first-degree murder. Three older teenagers were charged with felony accessory after the fact.
Veronica had arranged to meet Jones at the Bojangles to sell him marijuana, her father learned from reading texts on his daughter’s Apple Watch the day after she was killed.
Her mother and father were shocked, they said. They had no idea she was dealing marijuana.
Jones brought a 9 millimeter gun with him, a Wake County prosecutor said. Jones told police the gun went off during a struggle with Veronica, the prosecutor said.
Jones fled with Veronica’s marijuana and a small Louis Vuitton purse, a high school graduation gift from her parents, her father said.
One teen drove Jones, who lived in Raleigh, away from the shooting, court documents state. Others later fled the state with Jones, whose parents declined an interview request made through an attorney.
The Bakers were planning Veronica’s funeral when they learned about the arrests.
Jim took the phone call on his front porch, where his wife and neighbors were outside on the August evening.
“They caught them,’” he said he yelled to the neighborhood. “Everybody was cheering.”
When the visits stop
Sherry Williams, who lives in Durham, was years ahead of the Bakers on this tragic journey when the detective knocked on their door.
Her oldest, JaQuienton Sellars, 21, was shot down in 2007 in Orange County.
After his funeral, she was struck by the silence that followed, she said.
“The phone calls and visits stopped,” said Williams, 54, a mother of five.
Days of not wanting to get out of bed turned into months, but eventually, Williams told herself she had to do something to deal with the grief. So she started the support group Mothers of Murdered Kids to help other parents going through the same thing.
She works with about 10 others who lost kids to gun violence at a time, organizing retreats with therapists and providing little brights, like a mani-pedi.
It’s different when you lose a child to gun violence, Williams said, with unique stages of grief.
One of the first stages is questioning.
“Why did this happen? What did my child do to you to make you pull a gun and kill my child,” she said.
Then when mothers start to advocate for an arrest, they have to watch their own back, she said. She learned that firsthand when the unspeakable struck again.
A second son
Last year, Williams’ youngest son was shot to death too, at age 21. Jabari Williams, a graduate of Southern High who worked at Caliber Collision, was shot after someone tried to rob him and his friends in May 2022, she said.
There was never an arrest in the killing of her first son. Williams said she isn’t going to just sit back and let that happen again.
Like other parents she has spoken to, Williams started her own investigation. Jabari’s friends shared information that led to who she thinks is likely a murderer bragging on social media about how many people he has killed.
“It was shocking to me,” she said.
People would approach her other sons and say it was time for her to leave well enough alone and stop her digging.
Williams also noticed young men sitting in cars outside her home a few times.
It’s not going to stop her, she said.
“I want justice for my child,” she said.
Online scams, cruel gossip, trips to court
The Bakers did see their daughter’s body after the coroner released it to a funeral home four days after she died.
It didn’t bring comfort. Veronica didn’t look like herself. She was cold. Her hands were stiff.
“That is not my baby,” Jim said again and again. “That is not my baby.”
Soon more awful things cropped up. Veronica’s sister started a GoFundMe to help pay for funeral expenses. Quickly, five fake pages popped up on GoFundMe too, to steal money in their daughter’s name.
Jim received messages on Facebook saying mean things about Veronica, like she deserved to die. He read bizarrely inaccurate descriptions of her killing online.
He sent screenshots to police, but ended up just making his Facebook page private, and stopped looking at messages.
One of the first times the Bakers went to court for a bond hearing, Jim found himself scouting an opportunity to hurt the teen charged with killing his daughter.
“I looked at every camera in there. I looked at every exit in there. I looked at every stairwell to get out,” he said. “I looked at everything.”
He had a moment of hope until he looked behind him and saw two deputies on either side.
“I wanted revenge,” he said. “He killed my daughter.”
Laura was disgusted the whole time, she said. She never saw Jones show remorse.
“I was angry,” Laura said. “I am still angry.”
More than a dozen painful court hearings followed. The parents didn’t sleep the week before or the week after each.
“Every time you go to court, you are ripping that scab off,” Jim said.
Then there was a deeply disappointing ending.
The Bakers wanted the case to go to trial, but the district attorney’s office made a plea deal for 18 to 22 years for second-degree murder.
Screaming in the bathroom
Tara Jones had to leave the courtroom when the man convicted of killing her 16-year-old son Dylan was sentenced in December.
“I went in the women’s bathroom and started screaming,” Jones, 42, said.
Gabriel Jimenez, 53, had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for fatally shooting Dylan Anderson Jones on the morning of June 23, 2020, and was sentenced to up to seven years.
Jimenez shot the teenager three times in the street at a Raleigh mobile home park while Jones was fighting with Jimenez’s son Brandon, according to statements in court.
Dylan and Brandon attended West Lake Middle School together. Dylan had taken an Xbox, cash and a pistol from Brandon before the killing.
On the day of the killing, Brandon carried a baseball bat and his father carried a gun to confront Dylan, who had a gun tucked in his waistband.
Jimenez’s defense attorney successfully argued a reduced sentence was appropriate because he was trying to defend his son.
What kind of parent shows up with a pistol to settle a fight between two teenage boys, Jones asks. Why not start with trying to defuse the situation?
For a while after the killing, Jones had a recurring nightmare where she watched the killing but could not move to prevent it.
“Like nothing is coming out my mouth and my feet are like cement,” she said.
It mimics one of the things that bothers her most, she said.
“He died alone that day,” she said. “I can only imagine how scared he was.”
Lingering heartbreak
Siblings also walk this journey that doesn’t always get better with time, said Imani Taborn. Her brother, Ian Wells, was killed by two other teens in 2021.
“I am still in shock. This is the reality that I live,” said Taborn, 28, of Durham. “No amount of time will ever change what has been taken from me.”
Sometimes her now 3-year-old daughter asks for her uncle, Taborn said.
Taborn then has the task of explaining, once again, that Ian isn’t coming home
She remembers seeing him after surgery when the doctors said there was nothing left they could do, and the final glimpse as they closed the casket.
Then Taborn comes back to the present, and apologizes to her daughter for his absence.
“He was supposed to be here,” she said.
Seeking any connection
After Veronica was killed, the Bakers vowed to stay together, navigating an ominous path of living longer than their teen daughter.
The loss also launched them on a constant quest to somehow connect with Veronica.
Laura talks to Veronica in her room and feels her presence on camping trips, she said. Veronica loved yellow butterflies. Every time the Bakers see one, it is a visit from her, they say.
She and Jim even spoke to a psychic to try to connect. Jim wanted Veronica to tell him what happened, in her words, he said. That didn’t occur. But the psychic told Jim he heard Veronica saying she was sorry.
“I wanted to tell her goodbye one last time,” he said.
Their loss has taken a physical toll.
“The big part is depression,” Jim said. For Laura, her diabetes is now harder to manage.
“It has wrecked my blood sugar,” said Laura, whose weight fell to 108 pounds after she lost her appetite.
“I will be 60 in March,” she said. “I feel like I am going to be 100.”
Still looking for Veronica
Laura Baker fell and broke her hip in January 2021 while camping at Carolina Pines, an RV resort with a water park near Myrtle Beach. She’d hoped to see Veronica while on the operating table, she said, but she didn’t.
Jim had a heart attack in September sitting in the driver seat of his Ram 3500 at a stop sign in his neighborhood. Laura was frantic when he locked up and was foaming at the mouth.
Losing Jim is one of her biggest fears, she said. “‘You can’t die, don’t leave me here,” she remembered yelling at him. “Don’t leave me here all by myself.”
Jim said he saw Veronica when his heart stopped for six minutes.
“Veronica had a glow about her. You can’t really explain how pretty she was and how happy she was,” he said.
Veronica was with his mother and father, who are both gone too, Jim said.
“They were all laughing. They said something, but I don’t know what they said,” he said.
Since then, Jim has been working on his health. He just transitioned from physical therapy to attending a gym on his own.
He wants to be better for Laura. He doesn’t want to leave her alone.
No longer someone else’s bad news
The Bakers don’t like to watch television news anymore. Every time they turn it on, they hear about a kid killing another kid.
It brings them back. They cry for all the pain another family is about to live with. They worry whether witnesses will cooperate.
“It is all the time now.” Laura said. “I can’t handle it. I really can’t.”
Sometimes Laura finds things that open doors to the good times, like a letter Veronica wrote for a Garner High project about volunteering.
It was just another thing to put aside back then, but now, it makes her heart melt.
“In like what could have been, and what would have been. I struggle with that every day,” Laura said. “What if? What would she be doing?’
Instead of visiting their daughter at college on weekends, Veronica’s mother and father tidy up her grave.
The burial site is surrounded by a 14-inch white fence and dotted with seashells. Like they’ve always done, they take different jobs that parents must get done.
“Laura keeps the flowers changed out,” Jim said. “I make sure the grass gets trimmed.”
Laura, who works for a bank, often goes during lunch breaks. Sometimes she’ll read. Other times she’ll play lullabies on her phone.
She prays often.
“I know she is not there,” she said, “but I am her mom. I need to talk to her.”
Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina. Her work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The News & Observer maintains full editorial control of its journalism.
This story was originally published February 24, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "As more NC teens die from gunfire, more parents plunge into nightmares with no escape."
