Loved ones hold candlelight vigil for slain Las Vegas teen
Family members and friends had one message in mind when they gathered Saturday night in the northwest valley neighborhood where a Shadow Ridge High School student was gunned down.
Justice for Justise.
Justise Allen, 16, was killed Friday night while walking with a group of her friends in a neighborhood near U.S. Highway 95 and Ann Road, her father, Justin Allen, said.
Allen and several dozen others lit candles and placed them at the spot on Dramatic Way where Justise, a Shadow Ridge junior, died.
The gathering of about 100 people circled around the candles they had set down. They sang “Amazing Grace” and released pink and blue balloons, saying “Justice for Justise” as the balloons floated above her loved ones.
Her father said he will remember Justise for the way she could light up the room and the way she cared for her family.
When Allen went to see his daughter at the coroner’s office, she had her typical smile and looked at peace, he said.
“It’s like she wasn’t hurt,” Allen said.
Justise, the second-oldest of seven children, loved to dance. Her aunt, Elaine Turner, recalled the last time Justise got to dance with her father, at Turner’s renewal of vows ceremony last month. A Luther Vandross song came on, and the two spent the entire song dancing together.
She was a sweet girl whose mere presence could brighten someone’s day, Turner said. She asked for the community to pray for her family and called for an end to gun violence.
“We losing babies,” she said.
A plea for help finding killer
He and Turner asked for anybody with information to come forward to help solve her killing.
Allen encouraged parents to tell their children they love them and to talk to them about what’s going on their lives.
“My baby didn’t come back home,” Allen said. “And that’s a disgusting feeling.”
Las Vegas police said Justise and a 19-year-old man were targeted in the shooting.
The shooting occurred just before 10 p.m. Friday, Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Ray Spencer said.
Justise and her friends were walking to the neighborhood from a McDonald’s across the street when a vehicle approached them near Dramatic Way, he said. Someone got out of the vehicle and opened fire, hitting Justise and a 19-year-old man, before fleeing in the vehicle, Spencer said.
She ran about 300 yards from the site of the shooting to the place where she was found, he said. While she died at the scene, the 19-year-old, whose name was not released Friday, was taken to University Medical Center and is expected to survive, Spencer said.
‘Stay with us, stay with us’
The 19-year-old was trying to help her until a neighbor, Sean Phillipson, came to perform CPR on her, Phillipson said. The 27-year-old with a military background said he heard about five gunshots, tires screeching and screaming. He grabbed his gun and a flashlight, went outside and saw Justise bleeding in the street.
He performed CPR while his mother called 911.
“Stay with us, stay with us,” he recalled telling Justise.
He didn’t know she was 16 until the 911 call-taker asked her age, and a friend of Justise’s answered while Phillipson was still performing chest compressions.
“Afterwards I looked down at the blood on my hands, and I just couldn’t believe that it was a 16-year-old girl,” Phillipson said.
No one was in custody as of Saturday, and police had no description of a shooter or a vehicle, Spencer said.
Her death marks the 74th homicide in the county and the 64th homicide investigated by Metro in 2018, according to Las Vegas Review-Journal records.
Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.
