Jasmine Benjamin looked forward to following her mother’s footsteps into nursing.
The 17-year-old had taken her first steps toward her future career by enrolling as a freshman at Valdosta State University in August.
“She didn’t want to be too far from home but also not too close,” stepfather James Jackson said Saturday.
Jackson and Jasmine’s mother, Judith Brogdon, had high hopes for their oldest daughter, who they said was always a joy to be around. They looked forward to seeing the Central Gwinnett High School graduate make the four-and-a-half hour trip back to Lawrenceville earlier this week for Thanksgiving dinner and Black Friday shopping with the family.
All that changed, however, when Lawrenceville police officers arrived at their doorstep around 4:30 p.m. last Sunday to tell them Jasmine was dead. She’d been found unresponsive on a couch in a study room of her dorm.
Jasmine’s parents then received even more shocking news two days before the holiday: Valdosta police had determined that Jasmine’s death was a homicide.
Valdosta investigators were asking for the public's help in solving the campus crime. The GBI and FBI also are involved in the investigation.
Police have been able to pinpoint a timeline leading up to Jasmine’s death but would not release any information, Maj. Brian Childress told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday. He said police have interviewed some students, but the holiday has stymied the investigation since many students had left campus.
“We’ve found some additional items we would consider evidence,” Childress said.
Jackson, a security guard at North Fulton Hospital, and Brogdon, an intensive care unit nurse at Gwinnett Medical Center, moved to Lawrenceville five years ago from Queens, N.Y., with Jasmine and younger sister, Jayda, to “find a better life,” the stepfather said. Another sister, Janiah, was added to the family two years ago.
Jasmine was a popular student at Central Gwinnett High School, where her stepfather said she was a straight-A student. “She was a very, very, very smart girl,” her stepfather said. She was also involved in school organizations, including the KEY Club, DECA Club and Castle Alliance.
College was next, her parents said. “She always wanted to be a nurse and be involved in a family practice,” Jackson said.
Jasmine moved on campus at Valdosta State in August, following several friends who also had enrolled at the south Georgia university. It didn’t take long for Jasmine to make many friends. “She was always excited, always happy,” Jackson said. “She would not let anyone be down around her.”
“She was just very sweet, I miss her hugs already; her walking up to me and just saying ‘Hey Kim how are you?’ Just giving me a hug and always smiling,” fellow freshman and close friend Kim Kelley told WALB News in Valdosta.
Jasmine’s popularity has made it even more troubling that no one has come forward to explain the circumstances surrounding her death. “Someone knows something,” Jackson said Saturday.
Jasmine’s parents last talked to her on Nov. 16, last Friday. They said close friends told them they also last saw their daughter Friday night. She was found Sunday afternoon on a couch in Georgia Hall, unresponsive. Lowndes County coroner Bill Watson told local media the teenager may have been dead for 12 to 15 hours. Authorities initially believed Jasmine died of natural causes, which is what her parents said they were told later Sunday.
As they traveled Monday to Valdosta to get Jasmine’s belongings, however, Jackson said he and his wife were asked by Valdosta authorites to stop by police headquarters before going to the campus. That is when they were told that the case had been ruled a homicide.
Jackson said he and his wife were already trying to come to grips with the initial report that their daughter had likely died of natural causes.
“To find out it was a homicide and that somebody actually murdered our daughter changed everything,” Jackson said. “It was like hearing the news all over again.”
The grieving parents were still in the dark Saturday about the manner of death, nearly a week after Jasmine was found dead. “They haven’t given us any information - at all,” Jackson said. “We’re getting a lot of the news from media reports.”
The family said it’s also “frustrating” they have heard little from Valdosta State officials. They talked to a dean Monday only when they called to make arrangements to retrieve their daughter’s belongings. They talked to the school’s president briefly the following day, Jackson said.
WALB quoted Dean of Students Russell Mast as saying the university would provide counseling to students. “The university cares and … we are here for them and anything we can do to help them through the grieving process we will do that,” Mast said.
Services for Jasmine Benjamin are scheduled for Thursday, 6 p.m. at Levett & Sons Funeral Home’s Gwinnett Chapel, 914 Scenic Highway, Lawrenceville.
Anyone with information about the teenager’s death is asked to call Valdosta State University police at 229-333-7815 or the Valdosta police crime hotline at 229-293-3091.
“I don’t care how minute it might be, if Jasmine told you something that you think might help us find out who did this, please call us,” Childress said.
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