‘I still can’t believe it.’ Friends of Fort Worth teen shot to death grapple with tragedy
Days after her world was changed forever, Paige Wheaton, 15, can’t shake the feeling it’s not real.
“I still can’t believe it,” the Fort Worth resident said over the phone Wednesday. “I’m still waiting for that text from J.J. saying, ‘Where you at, sis? I’m coming.’ I’m still waiting on that text.”
Javarus Jackson, a 16-year-old known to friends and family by his initials J.J., was found dead on Saturday behind an abandoned gas station on Stalcup Road in east Fort Worth, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. He had suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
As of Wednesday, police have yet to announce suspects or possible motives, and Jackson’s family members and friends have been left to wonder what could have happened. They’ve been calling for justice on social media, with posts captioned #JusticeForJJ, but have found no answers.
Amid all this, they have also had to mourn a young man gone too soon. Clint Bond, a spokesman with the Fort Worth Independent School District, said records indicate Jackson was a student at Leonard Middle School but dropped out in October 2018.
Dozens of people, including teens, gathered Tuesday night outside of an apartment complex on Las Vegas Trail, close to where Jackson’s family used to live, Wheaton said. They stood together against the flickering glow of candles, some of them with their arms wrapped around each other. They sent blue and silver balloons soaring into the sky. They said a prayer.
“His mom, I could tell she was in a lot of hurt,” Wheaton said.
Jackson’s fraternal twin brother, who goes by his initials T.J., was at the vigil and was hurting, too, she said. No family or friends, she said, have been able to identify anyone who could’ve shot Jackson.
Those who knew him have been struggling to cope with the loss of a teen described as having a wacky sense of humor, an upbeat attitude and a free spirit, not worrying what other people thought. Wheaton said she misses the way he would playfully “roast” his friends with jokes.
When she met him, she was a sixth-grader about a month into her first year at Leonard Middle School, and he was starting late.
Someone had gotten into a fight with him, the “new kid,” she said. She went up and talked to him afterward.
“I was like, ‘What y’all fighting for? You just got here. You don’t even know nobody,’” she said.
The two became close friends, even as Wheaton went on Metro Opportunity High School. Jackson never had a problem making friends, she said, and it sometimes seemed like “he knows everybody” and “everybody knows him.”
Tributes for Jackson have poured in on social media, as well as videos of him. One video shows him running around a McDonald’s playplace with a horde of young children, keeping them laughing. Another shows him much younger accepting school awards such as classroom helper.
Wheaton posted clips of the two of them posing for a camera, often with Jackson smiling.
Even if someone was feeling “down or sad,” she said, “J.J. could come around and just put a smile on your face.” And though he was a happy person to be around, he was also always himself and had “a mind of his own,” she said.
At the vigil Tuesday, she placed a small white and blue stuffed bear next to a candle, underneath a sign with written tributes to Jackson.
He and Wheaton had found the bear one day, she said, and he let her keep it. He jokingly named the bear “J.J. the Demon.”
“I know that was my friend, but that was my brother,” Wheaton said. “That was my brother from a different mother.”
A police spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment on the investigation by deadline.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
