Mourners are expected to crowd Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit this morning for the funeral of 15-year-old Jamar Pinkney Jr., shot in the head by his father last week.
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The parking lot overflowed for calling hours Sunday at Clora Funeral Home on 7 Mile as family and friends arrived to comfort Jamar’s mother, Lazette Cherry. Many carried handkerchiefs and boxes of tissues. Some wore T-shirts with a picture of the smiling boy and the words “We Love You Jamar.”
• MORE: Dad in teen killing case: ‘I’m going now to turn myself in’
The funeral today begins with family hour at 10 a.m. and the funeral service at 11 a.m.
“This is the kind of thing that can break a family apart,” said Major Clora Jr., the funeral director and a longtime friend of the family. The Clora family has attended Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit with the Cherry family for 70 years.
“So we have to focus now on healing. … They will turn to their friends and family and their faith.”
Yolanda Cherry, Jamar’s aunt, stood greeting people as they came through the door.
“We’re doing the best we can,” she said, speaking on behalf of the family.
Inside, people stood weeping as photographs of a happy boy played on a video screen: Jamar at family parties and picnics, Jamar hugging his mother.
• DISCUSS: Local parents react to news of the murder.
Jamar Pinkney Sr. is being held in the Wayne County Jail without bond, charged with first-degree murder in the Nov. 16 shooting. If convicted, he faces life in prison without parole. He is accused of shooting his son after hearing the boy may have molested a half sister, age 3.
According to police, Pinkney Sr. stripped his son naked, took him outside and shot him in the head as he begged for his life.
Jamar’s great-grandmother, Edwenia Cuspart, earlier told the Free Press that the teen didn’t like sharing a home with his father and the mother of the 3-year-old. Cuspart said Jamar begged her to allow him to live with her.
A life sentence for Pinkney Sr. would not be enough for Shera Williams, a dialysis technician and the mother of two boys from Detroit. She doesn’t know the family, but she stopped by Sunday to pay respects to a boy she never met.
“I was devastated when I heard what happened,” she said. “That boy was just a baby.”
