This is the first part of Forgotten Children, a series on the tragic and underreported problem of childhood grief – and efforts to address it. Parental death has been rising in the U.S. due to COVID-19, the overdose epidemic and gun violence. MindSite News reported the story in collaboration with Verite News of New Orleans, which contributed photography and video, and is co-publishing.
It only takes one bullet to shatter the lives of eight children.
In the early morning hours of Sunday, Sept. 1, a fight spilled out of the Shamrock bar in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans. Raven Francis, her sisters, and a friend had gone to the bar for a girls’ night out, and about a half-hour after the melee they piled into their car to leave. But danger followed them.
A witness told police that a gun-toting woman involved in the bar fight, Chante Mark, 24, had summoned a couple of male friends, who arrived in a black SUV. The SUV followed Francis’s vehicle as it left the parking lot, police say, and someone inside the SUV repeatedly fired at it. Francis was struck in the head and others in the vehicle were injured as it swerved into a fire hydrant and overturned. Francis, 29, was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Her grieving family described Francis in an online tribute as “loving, caring, outgoing, thoughtful, and most of all, a fantastic mother…family was everything to her.” The bullet that killed her also left her four children – ranging in age from 6 months to 10 years – without a mother. Mark’s four children effectively lost their mother to incarceration, at least temporarily, when she was arrested and jailed on charges of second-degree murder and aggravated battery. Her case is pending…