May 5 is when many celebrate Cinco de Mayo with tacos and margaritas, but the family of Jalen Parks has nothing to celebrate. For them, the date is too close to the one year anniversary of Parks’ murder, which occurred in broad daylight.
On Saturday, May 2, 2020, witnesses at the Get-N-Go gas station on the 2300 block of Windsor Spring Road heard gunshots and took cover just as a red Hyundai Accent lurched into the station’s parking lot.
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A young man, the driver, opened the door and fell out of the vehicle, mortally wounded.
An unidentified woman, a nurse, attempted to render aid. According to witnesses, the woman asked the young man, later identified as Parks, who had shot him. Parks became incoherent before he could respond.
The shooting occurred around 2:30 p.m., and Parks was pronounced dead at Augusta University Medical Center at 4:48 p.m.
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The 23 year-old victim was killed just around the corner from his mother’s house and near the house he shared with several roommates who were his fellow students at Paine College.
Parks’ mother, Tameshiea Parks Howard, said her son was a promising young man from an early age. In fact, Parks was an overachiever.
“Jalen won an award in fifth grade for scoring the highest level in reading in all of Richmond County,” she said.
After graduating Richmond Academy at the top of his class through the International Baccalaureate Programme, Parks went on to study at Paine College, but he was sending in applications to larger schools that specialize in engineering, the career he wanted to pursue.
Besides being a top-tier scholar, Parks also played violin and was an athlete. He was a member of the ARC track team.
“There was nothing he didn’t excel at — well, except one thing. He thought about joining the military, but they told him he was too skinny,” Howard said.
Shantei Dukes, a family friend, said that Parks never got in trouble with the law and was just the opposite in character. When he was not in class or studying, Parks worked a job at Walmart where he was well-liked by his managers.
“I’ve known Jalen since he was a baby, and Jalen didn’t run the streets. He never got into any trouble. In fact, Jalen was kind of a nerd,” Dukes said.
Both family and friends of Parks are still totally mystified as to how he found himself at the business end of someone else’s gun.
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A year after Parks’ death, neither forensics nor the pervasive public surveillance cameras have offered any evidence that has been useful in discovering who killed him.
According to Howard, the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office was able to uncover very intimate details of Parks’ personal life that appear to have no bearing at all on his murder. To her, they seem disinterested in fleshing out the crime and identifying a suspect.
“They told me not to talk to the media. They said it wouldn’t do any good. But someone has to know something,” she said. “I asked to come down and review the file they have, and they refused to let me.”
Dukes agreed, adding that she feels the Sheriff’s Office simply filed the case away rather than follow every lead available.
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“They take what they want to take seriously. If Jalen was a high-profile kind of person, I have no doubt that they would have solved his murder by now,” she said.
After a year, Howard is now attending therapy to try and cope with her son’s death, but she said she knows that she will carry the weight of his loss for the rest of her life.
“He was my first-born. He was going to be something in life and now he is… just gone,” she said.
If you have any information regarding the death of Jalen Parks, contact the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office at (706) 821-1080. Or, contact The Augusta Press at (706) 834-8677.
Scott Hudson is the Editorial Page Editor of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com. Anna Porzio is a correspondent with The Augusta Press. Reach her at anna@theaugustapress.com.
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