On Wednesday, Pamela Walker was poised to see her son Jayland for the first time since Akron, Ohio, cops unleashed dozens of rounds at him, killing the 25-year-old Black man after a traffic stop and setting off weeks of protests over police brutality.
The memorial for Walker began earlier Wednesday with what was billed as an open-casket viewing, drawing comparisons to Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy whose grisly abduction and murder stoked the flames of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. The casket appeared to be closed when funeral proceedings began around 1 p.m.
Pastors and family members offered gutting accounts of Walker’s life.
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“He was a kind of a soft-spoken, fun, funny guy, and he was just always looking to make you smile,” said Walker’s cousin, Robin Elerick. “And that’s one of the things we love most about him.”
Elerick told the story of how Walker had recently told her boys he was looking forward to possibly becoming a professional wrestler called “String Bean.”
“And it was Jayland, you didn’t always know if he was joking or not,” she said. “So you know, we kind of, we kind of laughed it off, but um, you know, that was just kind of who Jayland was.”
Pastor Mark T. Jackson described the late young man as an “undercover mama’s boy,” “loyal almost to a fault” “honest” and “well-rounded.”
Dupri Whately, Walker’s best friend, said he used to lean on Walker through tough times.
“It just sucks because I used to call Jayland almost all the time. And I can't call him anymore when I’m going through some things,” he said.
“So this is pretty hard for me to stand up here,” he added, pausing for tears. “But he gonna live through me.”
Family lawyer Bobby DiCello told The Daily Beast this week that the Walker’s mother had been reticent to see her son because she was afraid of what he might look like.
His face “won’t be disfigured or look too wounded” in the funeral home, said DiCello. “But below his neck is a totally different story.”
Police have admitted Walker, who is Black, was unarmed when he was gunned down in horrific fashion, leaving him with over 60 wounds on his body.
Cops had pursued Walker on foot after what was described as an alleged “traffic and equipment violation.” Footage released of the killing to the public earlier this month begins after the car chase itself was in motion.
Police also claimed that Walker shot a gun while he was fleeing in his car, but video evidence of what Akron PD called a muzzle flash is inconclusive at best—taken from a far-away camera on the highway and in grainy relief.
A pistol and a cartridge of bullets was later found in Walker’s car, but with no bullets loaded into the gun itself. But what was clear in footage released by police was the shocking brutality of his final moments.
"I just want to know, what was the reason? Why you had to resort to him being gunned down in such a manner?" Walker’s sister, Jada, told Good Morning America.
Following the shooting, eight officers involved in the shooting were placed on administrative leave. Seven of them were white. None of their names have been released by authorities, who have decried alleged misinformation on social media pointing to possible identities—and claimed “bounties” were placed on officers’ heads.
Following his death, Walker—who worked for Doordash—was described by family and friends as a kind and loving member of the community.
Walker’s long-time wrestling coach in Akron told NPR that he was in “total shock” when he heard the news, recalling the young man was “one of the sweetest kids.”
"One of those kids, you know, I wish I had 10 of them on my team. That was the type of kid he was," Robert Hubbard told the outlet.
Hubbard explained that he just couldn’t believe why Walker would even have run from police.
“The Jayland I know—that’s totally out of character. I don’t know. I understand he was going through some stuff. He’d just lost his fiancée."
Just a month before his death, Walker’s Fiancé, Jaymeisha Beasley, died in a car accident north of Cincinnati.
Despite this, according to reporting by the Akron Beacon Journal, Walker had not shown any definitive signs of being unwell before police killed the young man. In fact, he had been helping his grandmother put chairs on her porch the day before.
Since his death—and particularly after the release of video over the July 4th weekend—protests have raged in Akron and across the country. Local officials have instituted curfews, and on one night arrested over 50 protesters.
Some of those arrested or sought for arrest during the ongoing protest included family members of other victims of police brutality, including the aunt of Breonna Taylor and father of Jacob Blake Jr.
Since Walker’s death, his mother and sister have had to grapple with the intense focus on their family while still wracked with grief, DiCello told The Daily Beast.
“We were talking about the… the number of people that will be present [at the funeral] and and all of a sudden she just leans forward and starts sobbing and heaving and she can’t breathe,” DiCello said of Walker’s mother. “And then she sits up and then she stares and then she asks what, ‘What was that?’ and so she has these moments where she collapses.”
Jayland’s sister, he said, was also cycling through moments of tears.
“You know, wondering why they have to go through this, and most importantly, wondering how they’re going to say goodbye to their, to their brother or their son, forever,” said DiCello.
