Tiny casket symbolizes new low for Oakland crime

Grandmother Dolores Padilla is comforted by family and friends at the service for 16-month-old shooting victim Drew Jackson at Fuller Funeral Home in Oakland. Grandmother Dolores Padilla is comforted by family and friends at the service for 16-month-old shooting victim Drew Jackson at Fuller Funeral Home in Oakland. Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Tiny casket symbolizes new low for Oakland crime 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

It was the size of the casket that shook Demarco Coney.

Coney, 19, stood near a wall inside an Oakland funeral home Friday and considered the contents of the open box from a distance: 16-month-old Drew Jackson, dressed in a sweater with white and teal stripes, white pants and white shoes.

"Funerals don't even hit me anymore," said Coney, Drew's uncle, who grew up in Richmond and Oakland before he moved to Benicia this year.

"I'm not trying to be cold-hearted, but I've been to so many it's just routine, and it's got to be a special cause for me to come now," Coney said. "But I've never seen a casket that little before."

In an audience that included Mayor Jean Quan, more than 125 family and community members gathered to remember "Baby Drew." He was slain Aug. 7 along with his father, 20-year-old Andrew Thomas, after someone fired bullets into a bedroom where they slept.

Police have made no arrests, yet Drew's murder has come to symbolize a breathtaking new low for criminals who carry out brazen acts in a city with an understaffed police force and the state's highest violent crime rate.

"Whoever did this is a coward," said Bishop Joseph E. Simmons, who called on young men in the audience to stop allowing peers to settle disputes with guns. "Until you chase these cowards out of our community, this is not going to stop."

Mourners remembered Drew, a cherubic-faced boy whose life began March 29, 2012. They shared stories about his wild laughing fits, his bushy hair and his potty training gone wrong.

A video montage of photos included many taken in the hours after he was born at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley.

"He didn't have a name two hours after he was born," said Margaret Carroll, Drew's aunt. "So we called him 'Hairy No Name.' "

Outside the funeral home, Drew's great-uncle, 22-year-old Julius Johnson, said both of the deaths had left him feeling empty. He, too, spoke of attending too many memorials.

"You grow a certain numbness inside after a while," Johnson said. "There's not many tears right now because the realization just isn't there yet."

Thomas had been visiting Oakland from Fresno to attend a friend's birthday party, but decided to extend his stay after his 18-year-old cousin, Al Rivera, was shot and killed in East Oakland on Aug. 3.

Rivera's funeral was held Thursday and attended by many of the same people who gathered a day later.

Coney, whose sister is the baby's mother, Alicia Jackson, said he was unsure if he would attend the final funeral - the one for Thomas, scheduled for Tuesday.

"It's not supposed to be like this," he said. "It's out of order."