Families remember loved ones lost to violence at annual vigil

Ceremony held at Terry Parker High School

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A support group came together Monday to remember dozens of lives lost to violence in Jacksonville over the past year.

The support organization Compassionate Families held a ceremony at Terry Parker High School. The group added 19 new honorees to the list of the hundreds remembered.

Those 19 new names added were all children taken by violence. They include names a lot of us know well – Lonzie Barton, Aiden McClendon, Kolton Shearer as well as many more.

The ceremony wasn’t just about remembering these victims, it was also about preventing more deaths in the future.

For the past 18 years Compassionate Families has been meeting, honoring the lives taken by violence and comforting the families left behind. The faces and names of the victims were on display to help tell their stories.

“The homicides families grows every year, every day in this city and it’s heartbreaking,” survivor Angie McKenzie said. “And these are children that have lost their lives to senseless violence.”

McKenzie didn’t lose a child to violence, but rather her father. He was beaten, shot and strangled to death inside his own home. Since then, she’s become an advocate for people just like herself connected through tragedy.

“The inhumanity can’t be explained,” McKenzie said. “It’s not right, it’s not fair. No one should have to walk in these shoes.”

May Martinez’s daughter was murdered in 1995 during a satanic ritual while away at college in Tennessee. Twenty-one years later, she said she still hasn’t been able to lay Colleen to rest. Still, ceremonies like these remind her, she’s not alone.

“It kind of soothes the pain, trying to help others, and trying to be here and try to keep her alive, to speak for her,” Martinez said. “I’m her voice right now until she gets rest. She’s not buried yet, due to Tennessee keeping her body parts.”

Speakers read every honoree’s name, including the 19 newest ones added to the list, and light candles for each life lost.

Nothing’s going to take the pain away. Nothing is going to bring our loved ones back, but it is a way for us to honor them.

“I would never want another mother to go through what I went through, because it’s the hardest thing to live through,” Martinez said.