Jocelyn Jackson was already sitting in church when she found herself needing God most. She hadn’t yet learned that her younger brother Montrell Jackson was among the three officers killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when her pastor asked the congregation to send prayers to her family.
“I didn’t want to break down in church, but it was just something I couldn’t hold,” said Jackson, 49. “He was a wonderful person. A wonderful person.”
Jocelyn Jackson said that she understands the anger behind the movement Black Lives Matter but that “God gives nobody the right to kill and take another person’s life.” Montrell Jackson, 32, had gotten married in the past few years and had a baby boy he adored, she said.
“It’s coming to the point where no lives matter,” she said, “whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or whatever.”
On a GoFundMe page set up for the fallen officer by a relative, he is described as a hero in a “time of uncertainty and imminent danger.”
“Words cannot describe the devastation that we feel right now,” reads the page. “Rest in Peace, Montrell, you will always be our Hero.”
Virginia Tech quarterback Josh Jackson identified the officer as his cousin on Twitter, using a hashtag that many adopted Sunday: #PrayForBatonRouge
“Rest in peace to my cousin Montrell Jackson who was one of the policeman that was killed.”
Jocelyn Jackson said that her brother, at 6-foot-3, towered over many, but that in her memories he will always be that little boy who was a picky eater. She said his siblings would tease him about how when he was about 9, he insisted on eating only Burger King Whoppers for dinner. Jackson said she was the one who would get him to eat other food.
Jackson said she never worried about her brother, who was “outgoing” and “kind,” being on the force, not until recent tensions in Baton Rouge after officers fatally shot Alton Sterling earlier this month outside a convenience store.
Jackson said another brother had told the pastor about the death before she made it to church for an afternoon service. Afterward, she said, the weight of it “rushed” over her.
If she could talk to the shooter, or anyone considering violence against officers, she said she’d remind them of a judgment beyond the penal system.
“If I could say anything to anyone, it is to get their lives right with God,” she said. “Hell is horrible, horrible place to be.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Carrie Camillo
