PHOTOS COURTESY OF INSTAGRAM

MIAMI – While not her official cause of death, it would not be a far reach to say Sherrone Lisa Jenkins was afflicted with a broken heart. Jenkins is the quietly courageous mother of Sherdavia Jenkins, the nineyear old girl gunned down in broad daylight as she and her siblings played outside of their Liberty Square home on July 1, 2006.

According to Gene Tinnie and Elaine Black, Jenkins died during surgery on Sunday, October 7, less than a month before her fiftieth birthday and 12 years after her daughter’s death.

Sherdavia was the bright and promising nine-year-old who was killed by a stray bullet from an altercation between adult men as she played with her dolls in front of her family’s home. She had been the sixteenth child to die of senseless violence in Miami-Dade County that year, and became one of the 108 child homicides in her brief nine-year life.

A City of Miami Peace Park was named in the little girl’s memory, to honor all children, located on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (NW 62nd Street) at NW 12th Avenue.

A private memorial service was held.