LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Tiffanie Floyd was 16. She acted in plays with her summer theater camp and played basketball so well her coaches thought she would excel at the sport in college and beyond.
Nylah Linear was also 16. She loved to dance and planned to try out for her high school cheerleading team.
Lamaurie Gathings was 17. He never missed a fishing trip with his dad and wanted to be a Louisville police officer when he got older.
None of them will ever get those opportunities.
All three were among the 17 children and teens killed in Louisville so far this year, the youngest casualties in a devastating public health crisis brought on by runaway gun violence.
More children were killed from Jan. 1 through Aug. 11 than in all of 2020, when 16 children and teens younger than 18 were among the city’s record-high 173 homicide victims.
All but one of this year’s child victims died by gunfire. At least another 65 juveniles have been wounded in shootings.
“We need to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, 'What are we doing?'" Louisville Metro Police Chief Erika Shields told reporters the day after two teenagers were killed last month in separate shootings less than 24 hours apart. “That we have become normalized to children being slaughtered is complete crap … we have got to be better than that.”
City officials, community leaders and criminologists point to a variety of reasons for the escalating bloodshed — from the destabilizing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to beefs fueled by social media and easy access to firearms.
And while the city has increased spending on efforts to prevent gun violence, victims' families fear Louisville is putting a generation at risk in some neighborhoods.
“All these kids are just wanting to kill each other,” said Lacy Hatfield, 30, whose nephew Darrin Thiele III was shot dead in April, a month shy of his 15th birthday.
“Our future is dying off.”
‘No relief for these kids’
For most of the first half of the last decade, homicides among youth ages 19 and younger hovered under double digits in Louisville — before climbing in the second half, according to data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which includes crime statistics voluntarily submitted by more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.
Last year, Louisville police reported 36 homicides for those 19 and younger, preliminary data show. The city already has 25 homicides in that age group through July 27.
“There’s no relief for these kids,” violence-prevention advocate Christopher 2X said. “We were hoping and praying or just thinking on the side of odds that after 2020, you could not carry that same energy into 2021 like this.
"Wrong. Totally wrong."
Louisville is not alone. St. Louis, Philadelphia and Tulsa are among other U.S. cities grappling with recent spikes in gun violence.
But Jefferson County’s juvenile homicide rate of 4.7 slayings per 100,000 children was more than twice the national rate of 2.1 from 2010-19, data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.
The death toll would be even higher if not for the life-saving efforts of first responders and medical professionals.
Most young gunshot victims in the area go either to the University of Louisville Hospital's trauma center or Norton Children's Hospital.
U of L saw 93 juvenile patients with gunshot wounds last year, hospital records show — double the number from 2019.
This year is likely on pace to be higher, with the hospital treating 52 juvenile patients with gunshot wounds so far.
Changed by gun violence: 'We've learned classmates can be there one day and gone the next'
Norton saw a 136% increase in juvenile gunshot wound cases from 2019 to 2020 — 28 to 66. The hospital is on pace for 88 cases this year, records show.
Nearly all of Norton's cases were accidental shootings. The U of L data does not indicate the cause of shootings.
"It affects the patients involved. It affects the families involved, and it affects the neighborhoods involved," said Dr. Adam Isacoff, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Norton Children's Hospital who also works in pediatrics at U of L Health. "And it affects the care team. … It really has deep impacts with everyone."
Norton participates in National ASK (Asking Saves Kids) Day, which reminds families to ask other parents if there are unlocked guns in homes where their children play.
The hospital's staff also distributes gun locks to families and spreads the word about firearm safety, Isacoff said.
But unfortunately, the doctor said, once young gunshot patients arrive at the hospital, in many cases "the damage is already done."
"It is our own epidemic in addition to the pandemic we are already dealing with," Isacoff said of the gun violence.
Twelve-year-old Terrell Smith Jr. was at home playing video games June 27 when bullets flew into his Okolona residence. One shattered his left knee.
His father, Terrell Smith Sr., said Terrell Jr. underwent surgery and periodically returns to the hospital for physical therapy.
Neighbors said the gunfire stemmed from a drive-by shooting, where Terrell and his father were innocent bystanders.
The stray bullets shattered their sense of safety, pushing them to look for a new apartment.
Terrell was set to start the seventh grade this week at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, where he will face new challenges getting on and off the school bus and navigating hallways.
“What he’s been saying is that … people need to think before they act,” Smith Sr. said. “Your whole way of life may change due to how severe the injury is.”
No single cause of gun violence
Theories abound as to the reasons for the increased bloodshed, but most criminologists caution against pinning a sudden spike in shootings on any single cause.
“It’s impossible to determine what the causes are because lots of things are happening at the same time,” said Richard Berk, who specializes in crime statistics at the University of Pennsylvania.
One factor, some say, is the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to contain the deadly virus that led to job losses, school closures and disruptions in social services.
That, in turn, caused a destabilization that was particularly hard on children and families in predominantly Black communities that were already struggling with disproportionate rates of gun violence and poverty that underscore decades of systemic racism and neglect by city leaders.
Others contend the police department has been slow to solve cases — the homicide clearance rate has hovered around 33% the last two years — because of its shrinking ranks and increasingly frayed community relationships following the police killing of Breonna Taylor.
The lack of arrests and convictions can lead some to seek their own justice, which 2X said perpetuates a cycle of violence.
“They say, like, ‘I don’t see no way that my mother, my grandmother will stop crying because they can’t get no answers,'" he said. "'Now, I’m going to lash out at somebody myself.'"
That often is fueled by social media, where beefs between individuals or groups can quickly spiral out of control. And those beefs are all-too-often settled with easily accessible guns.
Awash in Guns: ‘It’s real easy to get a gun’ in Louisville. And it’s costing lives
It’s estimated that slightly more than half of Kentucky’s 3.5 million adults live in a home with a firearm, while in Louisville, nearly 10,000 guns were reported stolen from 2014 to 2019 — an average of four guns taken every day.
It’s not just the availability of guns, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. It’s the availability of automatic or semi-automatic guns with high-capacity magazines.
"That means that someone is able to spray an area in a very short period of time," Rosenfeld said. "It increases the probability that others on the scene, including children who are not part of the dispute, but simply bystanders, may be hit and indeed may be killed."
That’s what family and friends think happened to Malik Parker.
‘This kid was going to be OK’
Malik was 11 or 12 when he first stepped foot inside James Dixon’s TKO Boxing gym.
Dixon, a veteran coach whose own son is a champion boxer, saw something special in Malik.
“This kid was going to be OK,” Dixon said. “I believed it with all my heart. I’ve been around long enough to know the pretenders and the guys that can make it. He was one who was going to be able to take this sport to the next level.”
'A great young man...is gone. Senseless' A teen murdered is remembered
Malik Parker was just 17 when he was shot on Louisville's South 40th Street while walking from a high school basketball game and died from his injuries.
Malik was living with his family in New York when he returned to his native Louisville to see friends. On Feb. 23, he asked his dad, Joseph Parker, if he could go to a basketball game at Shawnee High School.
After the game, Malik and two friends were walking on South 40th Street, a block from the school, when someone opened fire, striking all three. Less than a month later, on March 19, Malik died from his wounds. He was 17.
No arrests have been made in Malik's killing.
“Malik Parker was an amazing young man,” Dixon said. “You won’t find one person at any gym who had anything bad to say about him. He was getting better and he had a future. It’s tragic.”
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‘They were wonderful trips’
Lamaurie Gathings could fish.
At least twice a year, he and his stepfather and grandfather and uncle would head down to Lake Barkley near the Tennessee border, to fish for bluegills, catfish or crappies.
“I’d give him a 10 out of 10,” said his stepfather, Marcus Collins, 43. “Once he learned how to bait his own line and fix his own line, it was clean sailing from there.”
The trips were about more than the catch, of course. They were an opportunity to bond, to talk — father and son — about anything on their minds: problems at school, sports, a girl Lamaurie had his eye on.
“They were wonderful trips,” Collins said.
Collins and his wife, Lamaurie’s mom, typically leave for work at 5 a.m. On the morning of June 4, their son was not in his room when they left the house.
After they went to sleep, he sneaked out of the house and went to a party with his cousin, Collins said.
They left the party and got in a car with two girls and possibly two other people, Collins said. A short time later, gunshots pierced the car doors and windows.
Lamaurie, his cousin and one of the girls were hit. The driver, who was not from Louisville, tried to make it to the airport on instructions from a 911 dispatcher who told them to go to a “safe place.”
Police found them on Old Park Boulevard near the airport. Lamaurie was already dead.
His death remains unsolved.
'Always had something to drive and work on'
Like plenty of teenagers, James "Jimmy" Roberts was not the biggest fan of school but remained determined to graduate and pursue a successful career.
The 16-year-old was good with numbers and considering a future business degree. In the meantime, he worked as a cook at Roosters. With his money, he paid his mom back for the moped she bought him.
Jimmy "always had something to drive and work on," including go-karts, dirt bikes or the moped, Melissa Roberts said of her only child.
As a toddler, Jimmy could identify the make and model of a vehicle just by the sound its muffler would make.
Jimmy would have been a junior this fall at Western High School, where he was on the wrestling team.
"He was kind, compassionate, thoughtful and understanding," Roberts said.
On July 3, on Clarion Court in the St. Dennis neighborhood, Jimmy was hanging with friends outside one of their homes when an armed man drove up and started shooting.
Police said the man, identified as 35-year-old Bryan James Bruce III, got out of the car and shot Jimmy again while he was on the ground. The motive was not immediately known.
Bruce III was indicted on one count of murder. He pleaded not guilty.
‘A loving child’
Demetri Rhodes, one of two juvenile boys killed June 4 in Louisville in separate shootings, was a "normal 15-year-old teenager," said his aunt, DeShanta Edwards.
He was a fixture at family events and "very respectful," Edwards said, giving whatever he could to his loved ones on their birthdays.
"He was a loving child," Edwards added.
Officers found Demetri shot to death that evening in the 4100 block of West Broadway. A person was questioned following a tense standoff near the shooting in Shawnee, but LMPD has not announced any arrests in Demetri's case.
‘This is becoming a normalcy’
Tiffanie Floyd, the basketball standout, was named most valuable player at Moore High School and led the team to a 2019 district championship before attending Western High School.
But Tim Barnett, who trained Tiffanie since she was in the third grade, saw more than her talent on the court.
“The thing I liked most about her was her personality,” he told The Courier Journal. “She had an infectious smile and personality that would just draw you to her. She was just a sweet person.”
On May 12, the night before she was to play in a basketball tournament with the Louisville Lady Trojans, Tiffanie was shot dead on the doorstep of her grandfather’s home in the Chickasaw neighborhood.
She was a month shy of her 17th birthday.
“I think we’re just in disbelief and shock,” Barnett previously said. “And the sad thing about it is that this is becoming a normalcy.”
No arrests have been made.
'All I wanted to be was a mom'
This year’s youngest homicide victim so far was not killed in a shooting. Del'luna Banks was just 7 weeks old when she died June 19 at Norton Children’s Hospital after being shaken.
Police say her father, 23-year-old Del'shawn Banks, later admitted to detectives he shook his daughter at their home before "throwing her to the ground," fracturing her skull. He has been charged with murder and pleaded not guilty.
Cortney Jones said Luna, or “Baby LuLu,” was her "rainbow baby" after a previous miscarriage, an infant “full of life” with “her own personality.”
When Del’luna was killed, her mother was at a hospital receiving treatment for complications related to the birth seven weeks earlier.
“So it really hurt me, because I didn’t get to say anything to my daughter,” Jones said. “I just got a call. … For me, all I wanted to be was a mom.”
Jones said she thought her husband “was perfectly fine” before leaving him with their daughter so she could go to the hospital.
“This was my husband that did this, so I didn’t just lose one person. I lost two,” Jones added. “My daughter was my world. She was literally like my little rock star.”
‘This pain is unbearable’
Nylah Linear was “always bubbly,” in the words of the Louisville girl’s mother.
She ran track and field at Kammerer Middle School before moving on to Pleasure Ridge Park High School, where she was set to begin her junior year and had hoped to be a cheerleader.
And while she was soft-spoken, “the one thing she did do loudly is laugh,” said her mother, Candy Linear.
Nylah also loved to work. She got her first job at 14 at Jimmy John’s and later worked at McDonald’s. She also loved little kids and helped during the summer at a daycare where her mother worked.
Most of all, Nylah loved her family and was the third of Candy Linear’s five daughters, with additional siblings on her father’s side.
“She could always bring us back together,” Linear said.
July 21, a typically warm summer night in Louisville, Nylah went to a block party on Cecil Avenue in the Shawnee neighborhood. Gunfire sent the crowd scattering.
“She wasn’t there 20 minutes before shots rang out,” Linear said. “I heard the shots from my porch and before I could even call, someone had called me and said Nylah had been shot.”
She died a short time later at the University of Louisville Hospital. A 15-year-old boy was also wounded in the shooting.
About five hours later, Nylah’s friend, Michelle Moore, was shot in the same 200 block of Cecil Avenue where Nylah and the boy were hit.
Michelle was also rushed to the downtown hospital and died later that day. She was also 16.
Police have not made any arrests in either shooting or determined whether they were connected.
Family photo of Nylah Linear
Family photo of Nylah Linear
“When the gunfire began, people told Nylah to get down on the ground," Linear said, fighting back tears. “I think she was in shock and because of her standing, she got shot.”
Linear said Michelle came over to her house later that night while trying to process the loss of her friend before being shot herself.
“This pain is unbearable, and that’s just putting it lightly,” Linear said. “I don’t want anybody to ever feel like it’s (normal).”
‘Nanny, I knew they were dead’
Like Nylah Linear, 9-year-old La'Rea Hall also loved dancing and her family, including her father, Larry, and sister, Ka'Narri, who has since turned 9 years old.
Larry Hall, 33, was driving with his two daughters about 6 p.m. Feb. 2 when their vehicle was peppered with bullets near Interstate 264 and Bells Lane.
La'Rea and Larry died at the scene. Ka'Narri survived her injuries but has suffered physically and emotionally since the traumatic day, according to Howardetta Holbrook, the two sisters' great-grandmother.
"She's keeping it all bottled up inside," Holbrook said.
LMPD has not identified any suspects in the double murder or shared more details on the case.
But after the shooting, Holbrook said Ka'Narri told family how La'Rea tried to get out and run from the car after it was hit with the initial round of bullets before four assailants gunned her down and then drove away.
"(Ka'Narri) said, 'Nanny, I knew they were dead because they weren't breathing anymore,'" Holbrook recalled.
Both Holbrook and Shawntay Young, La'Rea and Ka'Narri's aunt, said they cannot comprehend why anyone would have targeted the young sisters and their father.
"There's not a word to describe how I feel," Young said. "They were innocent."
La'Rea had overcome obstacles in her young life after being born premature, weighing just 2 pounds, 3 ounces and requiring surgery for a birth defect on her right leg.
"She didn't let her disability stop her," Holbrook said, adding that she nicknamed her great-granddaughter "Precious."
‘It’s like the world stops spinning’
Darrin Thiele III changed his aunt’s life.
Lacy Hatfield was 14 when he was born. His 15-year-old mother and his father were unable to raise him, so he moved in with Hatfield and her mom in a trailer park off Cane Run Road near the St. Dennis neighborhood.
“I was your average teenager, sad and depressed, but I had to wake up because of him,” said Hatfield, 30. “He showed me an unconditional love I never felt before.”
Lacy Hatfield mourns 14-year-old nephew who was shot and killed
Lacy Hatfield remembers her 14-year-old nephew, Darrin Thiele III, who was shot dead in the St. Dennis neighborhood in April. She helped raise him and thought of him as a son.
Aunt and nephew bonded over video games, basketball and a shared love of Halloween. She and her wife took Darrin to his first haunted house, and though he put on a brave face, he latched onto her shoulder at the first scare.
He reveled in making friends and family laugh, whether it was covering himself in marker as a toddler or trying to do backflips that always ended with him falling on the floor.
“He had a beautiful smile and a beautiful soul,” she said.
But Darrin also had a tough childhood. He bounced between his mom, dad and grandmother. Kids at school would tease him for not having the newest phone or the nicest clothes. He took refuge in his room, getting lost in music and hoping it would someday turn into a career as a rapper.
On April 14, Hatfield got a text message from Darrin’s mom saying he’d been shot. At first, she wasn’t sure if it was Darrin’s dad of the same name. She hurried to her car to head to the hospital when Darrin’s grandmother called with the unthinkable news: Darrin was gone, shot dead a few miles from his house.
“I just lost it,” Hatfield recalled. “I was screaming like I never thought I’d scream before. I can’t put it into words. It’s like the world stops spinning and life hasn’t felt the same ever since.”
No arrests have been made in Darrin's death.
'Is this really how it's got to be?'
For many victim families, the reality is that life will never feel the same.
Media move to the next story. Police focus on the next case. Phone calls and messages of condolences that once poured in eventually slow to a stop.
But the pain never leaves. All anyone can hope for is that it becomes tolerable.
Lacy Hatfield wanted to seek counseling after her nephew Darrin’s murder, but insurance wouldn’t cover enough sessions for it to be useful. Instead, she finds comfort in photographs of Darrin that hang on her living room walls or the YouTube videos he recorded before he died, which now give her the only chance to hear his voice.
“It still feels numb,” she said. “There are days I wake up from sleep and put my socks and shoes on for work and think, is this really how it’s got to be? I have to keep going like nothing’s happened?”
Families of the other children who were killed say much the same.
Melissa Roberts can’t bring herself to move her son Jimmy’s prized moped, which is still parked where he left it in the driveway.
Marcus Collins’ wife still wakes up in the middle of the night screaming for her son Lamaurie.
And after Nylah was killed, Candy Linear was hospitalized with what she called a mild heart attack. She said she’s now “trying to just make it through each day.”
“I wish tomorrow wouldn’t even come, because after tomorrow and the next day, I won’t see my baby again,” she said. “That for me is like the hardest reality.”
For James Parker, the hardest reality was replaying the day his son Malik called to ask if he could go to the high school basketball game.
If he had said no, he thought, would Malik still be alive today?
The guilt became overwhelming, said James Dixon, Malik’s coach and family friend.
“The loss of his son,” Dixon said, fighting back tears, "… he had lost all hope.”
A few weeks ago, wracked with grief, Joseph Parker died of a heart attack.
Jonathan Bullington is an investigative reporter. Reach him at: 502-582-4241; JBullington@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @jrbullington. Reach Billy Kobin at bkobin@courierjournal.com. Reporter Siera Jones contributed to this story.
Remembering the slain children
17 children and teens have been killed in Louisville this year. These are their names:
- Yasin Abdulkadir, 17: Yasin died Jan. 10 after he was found shot just after 11 p.m. in the 1800 block of Dumesnil Street in the Park Hill neighborhood.
- Jordan Diaz-Pino, 17, Western High School: Jordan died Jan. 18 after he was found shot inside a vehicle in the 900 block of Whitney Avenue in the Wyandotte neighborhood.
- La’Rea Hall, 9, Whitney Young Elementary School: La’Rea and her father, Larry Hall, died Feb. 2 after they were shot in their vehicle at Interstate 264 East and Bells Lane.
- Arianna Smith, 13: Arianna died Feb. 12 after she was shot about 4:30 p.m. on Elane Drive, near Cane Run Road.
- Malik Parker, 17: Went to school in New York after previously attending Shawnee High School. Malik died March 19, about one month after he was shot Feb. 23 while walking on South 40th Street.
- Z’yaun Pearson, 4: Z’yaun died April 3 after he was found shot to death around midnight in the 4000 block of Parthenia Avenue in the Hazelwood neighborhood.
- Darrin Thiele III, 14, Butler Traditional High School: Darrin died April 14 after he was found shot in the 4500 block of Trumpet Way in the St. Dennis neighborhood.
- Kyon Higgins Jr., 10, Jacob Elementary School: Kyon died April 20 after his mother allegedly shot him at their home in the 1200 block of Algonquin Parkway.
- Tiffanie Floyd, 16, Western High School: Tiffanie died May 12 after she was shot while on the doorstep of her grandfather’s home on Grand Avenue in the Chickasaw neighborhood.
- Lamaurie Gathings, 17, Fairdale High School: Lamaurie died June 4 after he was shot while in a car with others at an undisclosed location before the driver headed to Old Park Boulevard near the airport, where police and EMS arrived.
- Demetri Rhodes, 15, Waggener High School: Demetri died June 4 after he was shot in the 4100 block of West Broadway.
- DaJuan Coward, 17, Iroquois High School: DaJuan died June 9 after he was shot two days earlier at Ballard Park in the 500 block of Caldwell Street.
- Del’luna Banks, 7 weeks: Del’luna died June 19 at Norton Children’s Hospital, and her father later admitted to shaking his daughter and "throwing her to the ground,” which caused her to suffer severe head trauma.
- Jimmy Roberts, 16, Western High School: Jimmy died July 3 after he was shot near Rockford Lane and Clarion Court in St. Dennis.
- Nylah Linear, 16, Pleasure Ridge Park High School: Nylah died July 21 after she was shot in the 200 block of Cecil Avenue.
- Michelle Moore, 16, Western High School: Michelle died July 22 after she was shot in the 200 block of Cecil Avenue.
- Vashaun Lee Morris, 16, Butler Traditional High School: Vashaun was shot and killed July 27 in the 3700 block of West Main Street.