Angela’s sister Joann never lost hope that she’d find her missing son Jaylen, 12. But months after she died with no news, there was a shocking discovery…
There was a knock on the door, and I opened it to see my gorgeous nephew beaming at me.
My sister Joann’s son Jaylen, 11, always had the sweetest smile.
If I was having a bad day, I’d hear his infectious laugh and forget about my troubles.
‘Auntie Angela, would you like anything from the shop?’ Jaylen asked.
‘Thank you, but I’m good today, love,’ I said.
My big sister Joann and I were very close. She lived on the same street as me, my children and our mum Shirley.
Joann was a single mum to two girls and four boys and her children were her world.
She was like a lioness protecting her cubs.
Living in a tough area of New York, we had to look out for our children more keenly than most.
‘I worry about them, sis,’ Joann confided in me when we heard about another crime involving a gang.
‘You can give a child the tools they need, but we can’t hold their hand their whole life,’ I told her.
Jaylen was her baby and a mummy’s boy.
He was cheeky, bright and a sports fan, playing basketball, football and zipping up and down the street on his bike.
My son Naj-M, 13, and Jaylen were best buddies, always trying to earn extra pocket money by doing jobs for the neighbours.
One day, when Jaylen was 12, he was on his usual rounds.
He’d asked his mum and gran if they needed anything from the grocery shop two streets away, and now, he’d called round at mine.
I told him I was fine and waved to him from my window, watching as he turned and walked down the path.
Next day, I was scrolling through Facebook and froze.
There was a post from Joann saying she hadn’t seen Jaylen since last night, and asking anyone who may have seen him to contact her.
I called my sister.
‘What’s going on?’ I said. ‘I spoke to Jay yesterday.’
‘He didn’t come home from the shop,’ she explained. ‘Something bad’s happened
to him, I know it.’
My blood ran cold.
'He didn't come home from the shop'
Jaylen had never failed to call his mum if he was running late.
This isn’t like him, I thought.
Joann called the police, but they told her they couldn’t do anything until he’d been gone for 48 hours.
In those crucial hours, while
we frantically searched the neighbourhood and put up posters, there was no media attention and little police involvement.
In our eyes, officers had wrongly labelled him a runaway because he was black, minimising the urgency of the case.
He was only 12, and we believed he should have been treated as a missing person.
As the weeks went by without news, Joann slipped into a dark hole and turned to drinking to block out her pain.
She was tortured by false sightings of him on social media.
Joann and I would run over to where someone claimed they’d seen him, only to have our hopes dashed again.
Every month, Joann and our family gathered for vigils by a historic former rail station, releasing paper lanterns into
the sky.
‘Somebody took him,’ Joann told me.
As a mother, she just knew her baby had gone.
Then, three months later, Joann was dealt more heartbreak.
One of her other sons, Jawaan, 18, was shot in the street on his way home from the shop, just steps away from her house.
He was a good, hard-working kid — he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The grief of losing two children in such a short time was impossible to bear.
It was every parent’s worst nightmare.
After seeing Jawaan lying lifeless on a hospital stretcher, it was as if Joann lost all hope.
Her health went downhill.
Meanwhile, there were no arrests in connection with the murder.
In time, Joann held Jawaan’s funeral, ensuring it was a celebration of his life.
‘There’ll be no tears here,
he wouldn’t have wanted that,’ she said.
Afterwards, we kept people talking about missing Jaylen however we could.
But we were given no updates on his fate.
The following year, on what would have been Jaylen’s 13th birthday, Joann put up a post on Facebook.
Wherever you are, I pray that you are safe and able to enjoy your day, she wrote.
Later, we got our family together and bought a cake with 13 candles on, in Jaylen’s honour.
A year after Jaylen went missing, Joann enlisted Kareema Morris, who founded the organisation Bury the Violence, which helped missing and runaway youngsters, to help spread awareness of Jaylen’s case.
She assembled a group of volunteers to help with the search, and was a huge support to Joann.
'Keep your head up, have faith'
With her on board, we also gained more movement in the investigation than we’d had in years.
Joann had always had faith that we’d eventually find Jaylen and lay him to rest.
Only, as the third anniversary of Jaylen’s disappearance arrived with no further news, I could see Joann wasn’t well.
Her health issues had got worse, and she’d developed a serious drinking problem.
During a vigil for Jaylen, Joann was crying and praying for him to be found.
‘Keep your head up, have faith,’ I told her gently.
But losing her sons and the lack of answers had taken its toll.
A month later, I was coming home from work and saw Joann walking up the path.
As we greeted each other, I noticed the whites of her eyes were tinged yellow.
I was a nurse, and knew something could be wrong with her kidneys or liver.
She was also moving more slowly than usual.
‘Go to your doctor,’ I urged.
‘OK, sis,’ she nodded.
Then days later, I got a call to say Joann had been admitted to hospital.
Just a fortnight later — two days before her 49th birthday — I had to say goodbye to my beloved sister.
‘Please get up,’ I pleaded, tears filling my eyes.
But I knew she couldn’t fight any more.
I believed she’d died of a broken heart.
‘Her boys have come to get her,’ Mum said.
It was devastating that she’d died not knowing what had happened to Jaylen.
Seven months later, police called one of Joann’s sons.
A body had been found in the attic of a house by a maintenance worker, just four streets away from where I worked.
It was a boy aged between 12 and 16, and they believed it was Jaylen.
Two days later, they confirmed it was my beautiful nephew, who would have been 16 in a few days.
He was so badly decomposed after being in the house for a significant amount of time, he had to be identified by dental records.
I felt waves of sadness, but also relief that he’d finally been found and we could bring him home.
It was as if Joann had given us closure from beyond the grave.
But we still had so many questions.
How had he ended up in
that house?
Had he been lured there by someone, then killed?
How had no one noticed anything in all these years?
In time, we held his funeral, with guests wearing either red, green or blue, his favourite colours.
Our family and I were comforted to know Jaylen, Jawaan and Joann were together.
Even now, we are no closer
to finding out how Jaylen
came to lose his life or end up
in that attic.
But we won’t rest until we get justice for him.
Angela Anderson, 37