Accident victim shares tragic auto accident story sets record straight!
By Thurman A. Martin, III for Focus Newspaper

Celebrating her 13th birthday on Monday, April 1st, Shamaya Parker was glad to be home from Temple Hospital where she had been treated for multiple injuries suffered during an accident late last Tuesday night.In an exclusive taped interview, she recalled details of the tragic joyride that cost her cousin Aisha DeJesus, age 14, and her life. Her memory was clear until the moment of the crash, at which time she “blacked out.” The girls, Aisha and Shamaya, then 12 years old, got into a 1988 Pontiac to show 13-year-old Leslie Ayala where the car’s owner lived. “He knew the owner,” Shamaya recalled. “But he didn’t know where he lived.” And it didn’t seem to bother either of the girls that their driver was a 13-year-old neighborhood boy because “we also used to drive.”Shamaya said that the four teens got into the car and headed toward 7th and York, where the owner, a man named “Crock” is said to live. When it started to rain late that night, Leslie turned around to go back, supposedly to Franklin and Pike, where the boys had first picked up the girls.

That’s how the car ended up northbound on 2nd Street with Leslie speeding on a rain-slicked road and his three young passengers shouting for him to slow down.” He was trying to slow down when the car went out of control,” said Shamaya. She also said that was the last she remembered before people helped her out of the car. “I had blacked out before we hit,” she said. “My vision came back as we were being helped out of the car. All the time I was asking about Aisha. Shamaya wouldn’t learn about Aisha’s midnight fate until 5:30 that morning. “I just started crying when I heard it because I was in shock,” she said woefully “It’s made me think about her and not getting into cars with underage drivers.” She described the car’s young operator as a family friend, though earlier reports made him out to be unknown” to the family. The fourth teen, 15-year-old Molik Bridges is a friend of Shamaya’s brother. Asked what the tragedy has taught her, she replied broadly, “A lot of stuff.” She later added she’d probably be reminded of it every time she got into a car with someone.

Contesting earlier stories of the boys offering the girls a ride home, Shamaya admitted otherwise. “I blame us for getting into the accident and getting hurt,” she said. “Nobody asked us to get into the car. We got in on our own.” The night before the accident Aisha, her sister Naisha (13), Shamaya, Leslie, and another teen had been pulled over in the same car on the 3800 block of Reese Street. Another taped interview, with Naisha, revealed that just before Aisha and Shamaya jumped voluntarily. Into the car that led Aisha to her untimely demise, Naisha had been riding around “alone for an hour in the car with Leslie.” Naisha did say that Leslie had been driving “real crazy” and that she had demanded him to return her to Shamaya’s father’s house on Franklin Street. “When I got out of the car, my sister came to the door and got in with Shamaya,” Naisha remembered. “I told Aisha to get out of the car.” Recalling the chain of events of that Tuesday night, she said she had some regrets. “I regret being in the same car that day and the night before because they never would have jumped in if I hadn’t just been getting out,” she admitted. She also blames herself, the passengers, and the police, shaving some responsibility off of Leslie for his reckless driving.

“It’s their fault for getting in the car,” she said.” And if police had taken the car the night before when we got pulled over, the accident wouldn’t have happened. “Larry Parker, Shamaya’s father, agreed and added that the kids shouldn’t have been in the car. “That hurt me,” he said. “Sometimes it takes something to happen before people wake up.” Shamaya lived to see her 13th birthday less than a week after the accident. Aisha DeJesus wasn’t so fortunate.

Perhaps that’s why her mother, currently incarcerated for unspoken reasons, found little comfort in the words of family and friends who have spoken to her since the tragedy. “She took it very badly,” said another of the girls’ aunts.” The whole family has spoken to her, trying to calm her down. Family and friends all seem to agree that the lesson to be learned is “not to get into a car with anyone under 18 without a license” according to Larry Parker.

But amid the conflicting tales of the teens and some pieces that just don’t coincide with earlier reports, neither the victims nor their families talked about the fact that the teens had a choice, and some made the wrong one. They hope that kids see this as “reality, not some game.” Yet they didn’t send out a message about the choices kids make for their lives. Bottom line: Four kids made a choice last Tuesday night. Why did it take one death, three battered kids, and a number of charges including manslaughter and possession before the kids realized it was a bad choice?