Ajah Jenkins calls her cousin’s phone every day for it only to go to voicemail.
She holds out hope that someone will eventually pick up and will lead officers to make an arrest in the death of Derricor “DJ” Jenkins.
Wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt, the 23-year-old was found Dec. 27 shot in the chest and lying on a sidewalk along Flat Shoals Parkway in DeKalb County, about a mile-and-a-half from his home. The discovery was made about 11 p.m., according to DeKalb police, but it was not clear if he had been shot there.
Jenkins was taken to the hospital, where he died, a police spokeswoman said.
It was another 24 hours before his family learned his fate.
About six hours before he was found by police, he had been sitting outside his home near the Panthersville neighborhood, Ajah Jenkins told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution while swiping through photos of DJ on her phone.
“The day after Christmas, DJ was on my mind so heavy and I get kind of sad because I didn’t reach out to him,” his cousin, fighting back tears, said about DJ, who was hearing impaired. “I probably should’ve just FaceTime-d him to say hello on Christmas just because we didn’t see each other. But I didn’t. I didn’t do it.”
In the two weeks since the fatal shooting, no suspects have been identified. Ajah Jenkins said she has yet to be able to sleep at night. Authorities have not provided the family with any updates on the case, she said, leaving her to imagine countless scenarios of what could have happened.
“Was DJ kidnapped? Did he get in a car with a friend? Did he go walking? You know, like, we have no clue. We don’t know. We literally don’t know how he left that house,” his cousin said.
That her best friend — the boy she played with after school as a child and the man she would text almost every day — is gone has been an overwhelming realization, especially since DJ was shy and spent most of his time at home.
“Five days out of the week, DJ is on the couch watching TV. He is a homebody. He’s always home,” said his aunt, Shermika Jenkins. “He had very few friends, so he didn’t hang out much, he didn’t deal with a lot of people.”
DJ was usually smiling instead of talking, according to his aunt, and the family didn’t know him to make enemies. Ajah Jenkins can’t imagine who could have killed her cousin, but she is confident that DJ was not planning to go far from his home, or even go out at all, the night he died. He took his iPad everywhere, but on Dec. 27 he left it at home. His phone and wallet were presumably stolen, his family said.
Credit: Family Photo
Credit: Family Photo
A full day passed before his family learned DJ died at the hospital, which is still shocking to his cousin. Ajah Jenkins said her father stopped by DJ’s home around 6 p.m. on Dec. 28 and ran into DeKalb detectives.
“He was asking the detective, you know, ‘What’s going on?’ and they said they were looking for (DJ) ... so my dad was like, ‘Is everything OK?’ and (the detective) was like, ‘I can’t tell you right now,’” Ajah said, recounting the exchange.
After her father called her to share the news, Ajah Jenkins immediately started finding all of DJ’s friends on social media so she could ask them if they had seen him. Soon after, she called his mother and learned he was gone.
“She was just crying and screaming ... I didn’t know what she was saying,” Ajah Jenkins said. “I just remember running down the hallways just screaming. I was just screaming.”
Finding little strength left, she and her family got dressed and headed to DJ’s home. Sitting in the middle of the driveway, sobbing and hopeless, was his mother. The family gathered around the woman in a circle, occasionally taking down their masks when breathing through tears became too difficult.
They were called to identify DJ the following day, but his mother could not see her oldest son like that, Ajah Jenkins said. Instead of having to look at DJ lifeless, the mother let authorities know he was wearing one of his hearing aids and that’s how he was identified, she said.
With such few answers, Ajah Jenkins said she is paranoid to go outside and that the sound of gunfire brings back memories of DJ. Gunshots have become too common in her neighborhood and she wishes people would just put down their weapons, she said while pointing to an orange gun violence awareness ribbon pinned to her coat.
Ajah Jenkins has since made it her mission to share her cousin’s story so that justice can be served.
“I guess I’m gonna be the one to get my face out there to help get his face out there just to try to get justice,” she said. “We just want somebody to come forward. Just give us something, even if it was an accident. Just say it was an accident. Just say something.”
About the Author
