A Memphis grandmother vows to keep 10 kids together after pregnant mother killed in shooting

Samuel Hardiman | Memphis Commercial Appeal

On Sierra Parson's right shoulder, she had the names of two sons – Kelvin, 4, and Kevion, 3. A daughter's name was across her back. Another was wrapped around her right wrist.

Every time she had another baby, 10 in all, she would get another tattoo, fitting for a mother whom her family described as inseparable from her children. “That’s how she is with her kids,” Jacqueline Parson, her mother, said.

Sierra Parson, 31, and her 11th, unborn child were shot and killed Sunday at 1170 Marble Ave., the family’s home.

Many of Sierra Parson's children were in the house at the time of the killing, Jacqueline Parson said. Sierra died while one of her teenage sons held her hand.

When Denise Flowers, Sierra Parson's aunt, saw her dead body, she had a heart attack and died, too, according to Jacqueline Parson and Joycelyne Horne, another aunt. (The Commercial Appeal learned that Flowers also goes by the name of Edie Horne.)

The Memphis Police Department has not announced any arrests.

Over the past few nights, the kids stayed at their grandmother’s house, some have spent time with other relatives. The goal is for them to stay together.

“Right now they’re trying to not be close by where their mom was staying at,” Jacqueline Parson said. "She had all 10 of her kids with her and I'm gonna make sure I keep all 10 of her kids with me."

A purple wreath adorns the doorway at 1170 Marble Ave. It’s a splash of color in a neighborhood filled with gray, low-slung homes and boarded-up windows. More than half of Lincoln Apartments is blighted and vacant. Some of it is roped off, as if ready for demolition.

The neighborhood is tucked just south of a walled-off section of Chelsea Avenue where the north Memphis thoroughfare meets Kilowatt Lake and Evergreen Street. A stand of trees and Cypress Creek, the stream that meanders away from Wolf River, cut the neighborhood off Vollintine-Evergreen to the south.

Sierra Parson and her kids used to play football on the stretch of Marble Avenue between Jacqueline Parson's apartment and her own. One kid would grab the football and run through all the others until they reached the end of the street, said Carolyn Settles, the grandmother of two of Sierra Parson's sons.

"They go to the store together ... They walk down the street together. They sit down and talk together... Everything was together," Settles said. "She loved her kids.... She had some hard times. She struggled, but she made sure her kids were straight."

Settles stood with Jacqueline Parson and Horne on the sidewalk outside the elder Parson's home. They remembered a woman who was always smiling, constantly posting on Facebook and, like others in their tight-knit neighborhood, always watching everyone's back.

Sierra Parson also filled an essential role — neighborhood hairdresser, the kind who didn't charge and made do with what was available.

Some of Sierra Parson's handiwork was posted on her Facebook page amid dozens of selfies. In most of the pictures, a child is perched on her shoulder. And Sierra Parson is almost always making the same expression — half-smile and half-pout — for the camera.

Jacqueline Parson appears in some of those photos with her daughter. They have the same large round eyes and long eyelashes. They looked so similar, one could mistake them for sisters.

In the coming days, the mother will bury her daughter. She hopes to get full custody of all 10 of Sierra's children — she shared custody with her daughter on some already.

Like her mother before her and her daughter after her, Jacqueline Parson had her children young. She thinks death, like motherhood, could come early, too.

“When it’s your time, it’s your time. That’s why I live right."

The family has started a GoFundMe page to help with the children's expenses. It can be found here.

Samuel Hardiman covers Memphis city government and politics for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by email at samuel.hardiman@commercialappeal.com