ST. LOUIS _ Jurnee Thompson, 8, was determined to go to the football jamboree Friday night with her cousin. Her dad relented, as a reward for her doing well in school.
"I asked my baby twice, did she want to leave?" said Rasheed Thompson, 39, of St. Louis. "She said, 'Yeah.' She hugged me. She kissed me and told me bye, not knowing that would be the last time that I'd see my baby."
The several hundred people attending a vigil Wednesday night for Jurnee knew what happened. The girl was shot and killed soon after fights broke up the jamboree at Soldan High School. She was outside a nearby restaurant waiting for her food when shots rang out.
Her cousin, Jason Adams, 16, and his friend Mason Hawkins, 16, were also hit and taken to a hospital. A 64-year-old woman was hit in the leg. The killer is still at large.
Jurnee was an angel, a fearless child who loved her family, her dad told the crowd gathered in the lot of Herzog Elementary School, which Jurnee attended. "Since Jurnee has been gone, the house just seems like a ghost town. It's not the same."
The vigil, organized by social service agency Better Family Life, was a time of mourning and reflection on Jurnee's short life. But it was also a call to action. At least 13 children have been killed by gun violence in St. Louis this year. Jurnee was one of three children killed over the weekend.
The deaths have caused outrage in the community. City officials have announced $25,000 rewards for information that leads to arrests and are looking for other ways to intervene against violence.
"We need to keep this energy going, we can't let it wane," Better Family Life outreach director James Clark said before the vigil. "We need to continue to challenge St. Louis to address this crisis."
The crowd included elected officials, police brass, clergy, others who have lost loved ones to violence and community members. People wore T-shirts that read "Youth lives matter" and "Justice for Jurnee."
"We are either at a turning point or a tipping point," Clark said. Either the city will turn the tide on violence, he warned, "or we will hit a major skid like we've never seen before."
When Clark took the microphone before the crowd, he told them it was time to mobilize like civil rights activists did in the 1950s and '60s.
While those activists were fighting racist Jim Crow laws and the likes of the Klu Klux Klan, "Our challenges are internal," Clark said. "Yes, I'm going to say it again." He said it four more times. The crowd cheered.
"It's not about how they treat us. It's about how we treat each other," he said. Racist policies and systems are still a problem, he added, "But brothers and sisters, we cannot face racism and each other at the same time. It is impossible; we will continue to lose."
Clark and others talked about how they need and appreciate the police, while the police need and appreciate help from the community.
"We have to work with each other," said Deputy Chief Ronnie Robinson. "We need the leaders who are out there on the street every night."
Mary Wood, the grandmother of 7-year-old Xavier Usanga, shot and killed Aug. 12, urged residents to share information about criminals with police. "They should not find refuge in our community anymore," Wood said.
Eric Miller, 39, who lives nearby in the Walnut Park neighborhood, attended the vigil because he wanted to show there are good people in the neighborhood who support one another. He wanted to bring his daughter, Makeeya Miller, 18.
"I like it when we can get together and support a bigger cause," Makeeya Miller said. "I just want things to be better for our city, our culture, or kids. We're better than this. We're bigger than just violence. I know we have a lot of energy that we can put into something bigger."
To end the vigil, Clark told those in the crowd to find someone they don't know and hug them.
"We need more hugs in our neighborhood. That's how we used to do it back in the day," he said. "We are going to hug until this parking lot is empty."
