The family of a Carencro High School student has been grieving the loss of the teenager who was shot while getting off a school bus. The family has launched a GoFundMe to cover the expenses for Jaylin Joiner’s end-of-life services, according to his grandmother, Thea Boudreaux, who described the incident as a “senseless act of violence” in the GoFundMe post.
“Jaylin was heading for only the best in life, going to school, working, and helping with his siblings,” she wrote. “We were not prepared for the high cost of a funeral service. We want to give Jaylin the funeral that he deserves, to honor his memory, and say our last goodbyes.”
The high school student, who was set to graduate from high school in May, was captured in a video shared on his mother’s Facebook page determining his ring size for a class ring.
“The first person to call me mom,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “We had so much to do. We just started getting ready for graduation.”
Joiner’s mother, who has four other school-aged children, has been unable to work since his death, according to Boudreaux’s post. The fundraiser expressed the hope of collecting $15,000 to support the family during this difficult time.
Joiner was shot around 3 p.m. as he was disembarking from a school bus in the Markridge subdivision’s 200 block of Bradford Drive on Friday. Despite being rushed to the hospital, he succumbed to his injuries shortly thereafter.
Amanda Blanco, the public information officer for the Lafayette Parish School System, expressed deep sadness over the incident, extending condolences to the Carencro community in a statement issued Friday evening.
The Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office apprehended 19-year-old Malikai Doucet of Carencro on Friday night in connection with the shooting, according to the Advocate.
Doucet is charged with second-degree murder and is currently detained on a $350,000 bond, as per online jail records.
In Louisiana, a second-degree murder conviction carries a life sentence.
