The Mother Who Wants Politicians to See Photos of Her Child’s Bullet-Riddled Body [View all]

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Source: The Trace

Scattered among the crowd at a gun violence prevention rally in Washington, D.C. last month were family members of shooting victims clutching photos of their loved ones. One grieving mother, Nardyne Jefferies, stood off to the side holding up an 8½-by-11-inch full-color photograph of her 16-year-old daughter, Brishell Jones, who was fatally shot on South Capitol Street on March 30, 2010. This image was different: It was an autopsy picture, showing Jones’s flesh split below the collarbone, peeled back to reveal bone and muscle. Jones was killed by bullets from an AK-47 as a group of young men opened fire on a Washington, D.C. crowd in retaliation for an earlier murder over a lost fake-diamond bracelet.

Jefferies has hoisted the grim image aloft at city council meetings and sit-downs with lawmakers and watched as they turned their heads. She’s shown it to reporters who decline to include it in their stories. Jefferies says she’ll put the photo on a T-shirt if it means jolting the American public into action.

“I just can’t see myself talking about gun violence without showing what gun violence is,” Jefferies, 45, tells The Trace. “This image is burned into my memory bank. It doesn’t make sense for me to keep showing pictures of what she looked like before.”

Read more: http://www.thetrace.org/2015/10/gunshot-victim-photos-nardyne-jeffries/