Shawn Jackson proudly crossed the graduation stage in Richmond, donning a black bow tie and a big smile Tuesday afternoon. It wasn’t easy for him to get there, those who know him said, but he proudly shook the superintendent’s hand and accepted his diploma.
Outside the Altria theater, teachers and administrators cheered for Jackson and the hundreds of other graduates at Huguenot High School as they filtered out of the lobby to reunite with family and friends, according to videos and accounts of the day. Families waited with balloons in the shape of the number 23 to celebrate the momentous day.
Then came gunshots — about 20 pops in all. Smoke drifted down the street as people rushed back into the theater, beginning to recognize the horror that had just unfolded.
“There is a shooter!” someone yelled, as celebration gave way to chaos.
Advertisement
Police said seven people were shot — two of them killed — and others were injured in the chaos. On Wednesday, they identified those slain as Jackson, 18, and his stepfather, Renzo Smith, and said they had charged 19-year-old Amari Ty-Jon Pollard with second-degree murder.
Jackson and Pollard had an ongoing dispute, and exchanged words not long after the graduation ceremony ended, Richmond interim police chief Rick Edwards said. Police believe Pollard, who was not a student, then went to his car to retrieve a gun and opened fire.
The gruesome scene evoked outrage from city and state leaders. Across the street from the theater, people surrounded a trio of victims, including a young man on his back. His green graduation robe was open, revealing a bloodstained white shirt. A man was crumpled on his side next to him. Diplomas in leather folios, a graduation cap and a flattened bouquet of flowers — left by graduates who fled in the melee — were scattered around him.
Rennada Smith, Renzo Smith’s sister, said she was angry that her family would have to bury her brother and nephew at the same time, “because I don’t know what we’re going to do, to bury not one but two.” Smith described her brother as a fun-loving and devoted parent who was committed to making sure Jackson graduated.
Advertisement
“To get a child through high school is hard,” she said. “My brother was on him to make sure he stayed on course. He walked across the stage, and then someone took his life.”
A man who identified himself as Pollard’s stepfather said the family was not yet ready to talk.
“Condolences to everybody,” he said, adding, “it’s always two sides to a story.”
The graduation ceremony was supposed to be a culminating moment of triumph after a tough year for students and staff at Huguenot High School, where students have experienced several incidents of gun violence in the past 10 months. A student, Jaden Carter, was shot and died near the high school campus in January. Another student was shot in September while walking to a bus stop.
“Graduation, a momentous day for many of our students, a day that should have been a moment of joy and celebration of friends and family, was taken away in seconds, their lives changed forever,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said in a news conference Wednesday.
Advertisement
Violence in schools has been on the rise since students returned to the classroom from the covid-19 pandemic; on Tuesday night, three other Richmond Public Schools students were shot in separate incidents. School leaders and experts around the country have reported an unprecedented number of guns in schools and climbing threats. And while it’s still highly unlikely that students will experience a school shooting, gun violence nationally is on the rise. According to a Washington Post analysis, the country averaged about 11 school shootings a year through 2017. Starting in 2018, violent incidents began climbing, and in 2022 there were more school shootings — 46 — than in any year since at least 1999.
“We cannot continue to watch as young lives are taken from us. This epidemic of senseless murder and gun violence must end,” said Del. Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth). “Our children should be at school today, and we should be celebrating graduations this week, and instead we are mourning and grieving our losses again.”
Police said a 31-year-old who was shot in the incident and sustained life-threatening injuries was now expected to survive. The others struck by gunfire — a 14-year-old boy, a 32-year-old man, a 55-year-old man and a 58-year-old man — all had injuries that were not considered life-threatening, Edwards said. He said a 9-year-old girl was hit by a car, treated at the scene and later went to a hospital with injuries that were not thought to be life-threatening.
Advertisement
Rennada Smith confirmed that the girl hit by a vehicle was Renzo Smith’s child and Jackson’s sister.
“That was his baby girl hit by that car. She saw her daddy lying on the ground and came running to him,” Smith said in an interview.
Datrell Glover, 35, the sister of Jackson’s mother, held an impromptu news conference with friends and family in the parking lot of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, the Richmond skyline in the background. Jackson’s mother, unable to speak, watched from a nearby car.
Glover said it breaks her heart that she wasn’t able to attend the graduation. Both of Jackson’s parents had graduation shirts on for the ceremony, she said, and “when [Shawn] walked off that stage he was nothing but smiles. He had no idea that his life was going to end that day.”
Glover described Jackson as a happy person who loved rap music, loved to DJ at family events and wanted to go into music production as a career.
Renzo Smith, her brother-in-law, was retired from the military and worked as a truck driver. Originally from New Orleans, he loved soul food and always piled his plate the highest at family gatherings. The day before the shooting, Glover said, she had visited with him and talked about how excited she was to finally be ready to join the family on an upcoming cruise. “If I knew he was going to be gone, I would’ve hugged him a little longer,” she said tearfully.
Kevin Olds, a former assistant principal at Huguenot, described Jackson in a letter to Richmond schools as “a very bright young man who could master any textbook,” but because of his struggles with the “structure of high school,” Olds often found the youth in his office.
Advertisement
“At times, Shawn wanted to give up, and he considered dropping out of school. But the safety net of the village would not allow that,” Olds said.
Eric Jackson, a close friend of Shawn Jackson (the two are not related), said he was working security at the graduation. He was waiting for Shawn to meet up outside to take photos after graduation when the gunshots began.
Eric Jackson, 27, described Shawn as funny and outgoing. He said he was always the “life of the party” and loved sports and rapping. He was known in the local rap scene as “OTG Shawn.”
“He was an entertainer at heart,” Jackson said. “He loved to put on a show.”
Eric Jackson said Shawn struggled in school and worried he wasn’t going to graduate, but then it was all he could talk about for days.
“He didn’t believe he could finish and he did,” Jackson said. “That’s all they were talking about for the last couple days, ‘about to graduate, about to graduate.’”
Advertisement
Fabiola Chesnut, a Spanish teacher at the high school, said she gathered with staff outside the theater to cheer on students as they left the ceremony until the gunshots erupted. She ran back into the theater, and down into the basement bathroom with another teacher. They locked the door and wedged themselves between the wall and bathroom sink.
Others shook the door handle, begging her to unlock it and let them in. She stood frozen, terrified that a gunman would be on the other side.
George Womack was outside waiting for his nephew and filming the scene around the theater as graduates searched the crowd for their families. He caught the moment when the gunshots started to ring over the crowd. Hundreds of people began running and screaming. He said his sister was trampled as people fled for safety.
Advertisement
“We’ve been worried about them these last two years with just so much shooting going on,” Womack said. “These kids go to school to get an education and to graduate. It’s supposed to be a moment for them.”
At a news conference, Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras said making it to graduation was not easy for Jackson, but he still crossed the stage smiling, proud and celebrating like all of his peers.
“I can’t shake the image of him receiving CPR on the ground still in his graduation gown,” he said.
Kamras said all of the remaining Richmond high school graduations are being rescheduled to next week, and they will take place at the schools, not the theater, with enhanced security and more limited seating. He said in a letter to families that all other school events and classes are canceled for the remainder of the year.
Advertisement
By late Wednesday morning, the streets surrounding the Altria Theater were quiet. One man walked his dog, and a couple strolled through the park across the street from the theater, as a handful of journalists set up cameras and broadcast reports about the shooting.
On a sidewalk corner just a few feet from where a man lay sprawled on his back just after the shooting, people had left three bouquets of flowers wrapped in plastic. Strips of discarded yellow police tape were visible curled around signposts and strewn in the streets.
Moriah Balingit, Cate Brown, Alice Crites, Parker Michels-Boyce, Razzan Nakhlawi, Hannah Natanson and Sabby Robinson contributed to this report.
correction
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Shawn Jackson. The article has been corrected.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLGkecydZK%2BZX2d9c3%2BOaW1oaGdkv6qvx6amp5xdncKowcSnpq1lmJ60qXnSnJ%2Bop5xitLOtw66YraGfo3q0tM6oq6Kml2LDqq%2FToqSsZw%3D%3D