05/01/2026
"What They Left Behind"
Shreveport, Louisiana will never forget April 19, 2026.
Eight children were lost in a tragedy that shook the entire community. Seven were killed by their own father, and one by their uncle.
Two women were also shot and survived.
Vigils filled the neighborhood with candles, tears, balloons, stuffed animals, and eight wooden crosses carrying the children’s names.
When me, my wife CarolAnn Jackson, our two children, and the Minnesota mascot Yammy Bear heard what happened, we drove from Minnesota to Shreveport to bring comfort, prayers, and stuffed animals to grieving children and families.
The neighborhood felt heavy with pain.
Church members, neighbors, and mothers stood outside devastated, trying to understand how so much violence could happen inside one home. Some cried openly.
Others stood in silence staring at the house where the tragedy happened.
We laid stuffed animals beside the crosses while people shared heartbreak, anger, and disbelief.
Then something happened none of us will ever forget.
A gray cat slowly walked around our SUV crying out with soft meows, almost as if it was searching for its family.
The cat walked straight toward CarolAnn and our two children, rubbing against her legs gently while they sat near the driveway comforting it.
The cat belonged to the family.
It was still waiting for the children who would never come back home.
Earlier that night, CarolAnn had gone to buy the cat food because she said somebody had to care for what was left behind until the mother came home from the hospital.
As she rubbed the cat, her hand touched something small on the ground. She picked it up under the streetlight and realized it was a bullet fragment.
Even the ground was still carrying pieces of the violence.
One woman nearby began crying again. Another person whispered, “Lord have mercy.”
A mother holding her child tightly said softly, “This could’ve been any of us.”
And that is the warning behind this story.
Abusive relationships often begin with control, jealousy, fear, threats, and emotional manipulation long before violence becomes deadly.
Too many warning signs get ignored until entire families are destroyed.
Love should never make someone fear for their life.
Our decisions do not only affect us. They affect our children, our families, and entire communities forever.
“What They Left Behind” is not only about the lives taken.
It is about the trauma left behind afterward — the empty bedrooms, the grieving mothers, the broken neighborhoods, the candles, the crosses, and even a gray cat still searching for the family it lost.
