‘Jayden was our hero’: How people are remembering the boy killed while trying to protect his mom in Chicago
CHICAGO — Gov. JB. Pritzker announced new training for members of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board in the wake of the controversy that led to the resignations of Board Chair Donald Shelton and board member Leann Miller.
The board approved the parole of a man later accused of stabbing his pregnant ex-girlfriend and killing her 11-year-old son.
“One thing that we’ve decided to do is to make sure we enhance the domestic violence training that all Prison Review Board members get including all the ones who are there now, and of course any new ones that are proposed to make sure this never happens again,” Pritzker said.
The 11-year-old boy, Jayden Perkins, was a beloved classmate at Peirce Elementary School and a gifted dance studio at Gus Giordano Studio in Andersonville.
He had figured out the quickest way to arrive at joy was to dance there.
With a scholarship at the Gus Giordano Dance Studio, he found happiness and he brought it to others.
“I really called him an angel here on Earth, because you never saw Jayden upset, not happy, not trying, not being a friend to everyone in the room,” Executive Director Amy Giordano said. Everyone in the building adored Jayden.”
She remembers him as a talented singer, which impressed the producers of “MJ,” the Michael Jackson Broadway Musical.
“His dancing? Incredible. His heart? Enormous,” Giordano said.
But perhaps the most important quality was the courage he had to step on stage, the courage to risk failure.
“Dance takes a lot of courage, and Jayden was, Jayden was our hero,” Giordano said.
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It was the courage that led Jayden to stop between his pregnant mother and a knife-wielding attacker who broke into his home on the morning of March 13, just as he was ready to walk out the door to school.
He shielded his mom’s body and was stabbed in his chest.
The man arrested and charged with the killing was the mother’s former boyfriend from 15 years earlier.
He had a history of domestic violence and was out on parole. He was released days before the attack and had violated an order of protection, according to authorities.
Jayden’s mother was also stabbed multiple times.
The family is asking for privacy.
His friends are asking for justice.
“We can’t carry on as normal,” Lorianne Zaimi, his principal, said.
It’s been a difficult few days at Pierce Elementary School in Andersonville.
Zaimi is helping students through grief.
“We’re just taking things one day at a time,” Zaimi said.
Jayden’s classmates have plastered his locker and the walls around it with memories and messages.
“The kids talked about him being that superhero,” Zaimi said. “His protection of his mother showed how much of a superhero he is.
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Jayden played football and starred in the school musical.
His friends remembered his warmth and compassion, but most of all his ability to spread joy.
“If somebody was like, sad, he would turn their frown upside down,” Emmanuel Jaimes said.
And that’s what his dancing was all about in moving his body, he moved everyone around him to a better place.
“Every dancer that he danced with, everybody in the room got better because Jayden was loving it so much,” Giordano said.
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