A week after 7-month-old Kiyomi Parker was fatally shot inside a North St. Louis home by an older child, her mother isn’t asking people to choose sides. She’s asking them to pray.
“I want others to pray for my family,” 19-year-old Janyla Parker told KSDK. “Pray for her father’s family as well.”
Her plea has lingered as St. Louis continues searching for answers to a tragedy that has drawn national attention.
Educators, counselors and child-development experts who spoke to The St. Louis American say understanding how something like this happens requires looking long before the moment a trigger is pulled.
Investigators say the shooting happened June 26 inside a home in the 8400 block of North Broadway after a 10-year-old boy found a loaded handgun hidden beneath a mattress and shot Kiyomi. She died later at a hospital.
Police charged Kiyomi’s father, 19-year-old Ca’Marion Pawnell, alleging the handgun belonged to him and had been left accessible to children. The 10-year-old also faces a murder charge in juvenile court.
For many child advocates, however, the legal case is only one part of the story.
“Everybody who touches the life of a child — everybody’s responsible,” said licensed professional counselor Etoya White.
White said Kiyomi’s death cannot be understood by looking only at one terrible afternoon. The adults surrounding children, the trauma they experience and the opportunities available all shape how they navigate the world long before a crisis occurs.
Communities often rush to ask what punishment should follow, White said, instead of asking what conditions brought a child to that moment.
“A 10-year-old is still a child regardless of race,” White said. “Developmentally, we can’t selectively accelerate childhood because the child is Black.”
Researchers call that bias “adultification” — the tendency to perceive Black children as older, less innocent and more responsible than they are developmentally.
Dr. Jerome Morris, president of the American Educational Research Association, describes a related concept as the “innocence gap,” in which Black children are often perceived as less vulnerable than they are.
His challenge, he said, is simple: “Love Black children.”
Healthy neighborhoods, stable schools, supportive adults and meaningful opportunities matter because, Morris said, “healthy communities create healthy children.”
That message resonates with one St. Louis teenager who knows how quickly childhood can become intertwined with gun violence.
The high school sophomore, who requested anonymity because of his history with gun violence, said he once carried a handgun because he believed it would keep him safe.
“My environment played a big part,” he said. “I didn’t grow up in a good area.”
Carrying a gun felt like protection until the day he was accidentally shot.
“It was a wake-up call,” he said. “But I had to want to change.”
Looking back, he said adults often underestimate how much neighborhoods, peer groups and constant exposure to violence shape a child’s thinking. His own turning point came because his family refused to give up on him.
“The moment that stayed with me wasn’t getting shot,” he said. “It was what my choices put my mother through.”
Tanesia Simmons, executive director of Believe Middle College, said relationships are built long before a crisis.
She recalled a student returning to school after being shot over the weekend. Staff noticed the bandage on his arm, and he turned to them for help.
“He knew that he could tell us what happened, show remorse and get help changing his bandage at our school,” Simmons said.
“People have started to paint all youth in St. Louis with a single brush,” she said. “They each have different stories, and if given the opportunity, will rise to the occasion.”
Kiyomi’s killing has attracted national attention in part because prosecutors rarely bring a murder charge against a 10-year-old child. Under Missouri law, children younger than 12 cannot be certified to stand trial as adults, so the case will remain in juvenile court.
For White and others, the more pressing question is not how the justice system responds after a tragedy but what adults can do to prevent one.
The tragedy has also renewed attention to children’s access to firearms.
According to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, Kiyomi was the second juvenile killed by gunfire and the 24th juvenile shooting victim in the city this year — matching the total at the same point last year.
Statewide, firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in Missouri. More than 50 children younger than 17 were shot across the St. Louis metropolitan area last year, nearly half fatally. Missouri also ranks among the states with the highest rates of unintentional shootings involving children, incidents that overwhelmingly occur inside homes.
Community organizations have tried to reduce those risks by making gun locks more accessible. Through partnerships with the Lock It for Love campaign and Be SMART St. Louis, free gun locks are available at every branch of the St. Louis Public Library and the St. Louis County Library.
White said those resources are important, but so is changing the conversation.
“From an accountability and responsibility standpoint, we do have to have that conversation again about weapons being within reach of young people that are not locked, that are not secured,” White said. “Please, if you have children in the home, secure your weapons.”