MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Multiple families are in mourning across the city after more than a dozen people were injured over the weekend. Two of the shooting victims died, including a young mother.
Detectives are still piecing together the moments leading up to 19-year-old mother Jermeisha Nance’s death early Sunday morning. They said a total of five people were hit by gunfire inside the Diamonds of Memphis Club.
“High-spirited girl, very bold, and it’s just tragic that I have to live with the fact that she is no longer here for violence,” the victim’s father Keland Nance said.
Nance’s death isn’t the only murder police said they’re looking into from the weekend. Hours after the Diamonds Club shooting, two men were shot in North Memphis off North Seventh Street, and one of them didn’t make it.
In total, least 15 were people shot, including the two victims who died.
“I feel the same as when one person gets shot. It’s horrible,” Memphis resident Asad Mujihadeen said.
He was working on a home on the same Parkway Village street where a man was shot Saturday.
Mujihadeen, who has served time himself, said he’s now dedicated his life to work and to mentoring children to not go down the wrong path. He said fighting violence starts with education.
“You have to get out in the streets and try to talk to the kids and find out what they’re doing,” he said. “If you change the way people think, you’ll change what they do.”
It’s unclear if anyone has been arrested for the shootings or how many people in the cases knew their attacker.
So far this year, police said there have been 154 homicides, compared to 152 this time last year.