MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The heartbreak that Rosalind Shields felt when her son Richard Jordan III was murdered in November 2017 will never go away. Now she feels a different type of pain after learning the memorial she put up for him is gone.
“They already don’t know who killed him. Now one of his memorials is gone. What else?” she said.
Shields didn’t want to show her face on camera because her son’s killers are still on the run, but she says she received a call about the memorial being gone last week.
She didn’t believe that was possible until she went to look for herself.
“I went by there, and it was gone. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I see a lot of memorials around Memphis, and they’re not gone.”
On Monday, Shields made several calls and went looking for answers to no avail.
“I still don’t know what happened.”
The memorial was placed at Airways and Ketchum where the shooting happened. This a state maintained road. TDOT says several agencies recently participated in a clean-up there last week.
They’re now trying to track down if it was moved during the event and where it could be. Time is of the essence for this grieving mom as she fights to make sure her son is never forgotten.
“It’s like my mission is going in vain. It’s like people are forgetting about him, and it hurts. It hurts real bad,” she said.
TDOT released a statement to WREG on Tuesday saying:
The memorial was moved during the event, and was accidentally thrown away. It was removed for the mowers and it just accidentally got in the garbage pile. As for policy, we are sensitive to the memorials and will leave them alone as long as they aren’t posing a safety hazard.
We have also relayed this information to the mother.