‘One day at a time’: Mother, girlfriend remember Wichita man killed outside smoke shop
Ciana Jackson broke into tears when she got back from church Sunday and saw the shoes that belonged to her son, Jaden C. Wilson.
“Jaden will never be here again,” she said. “It’s a process, one day at a time.”
The 20-year-old Wichita man was shot and killed March 21 while sitting in his girlfriend’s car in a smoke shop parking lot near 21st and Grove. His girlfriend, Sonteah Norwood, was in the driver’s seat when she said a former friend of her boyfriend shot him.
Twelve shots were fired with six hitting her car, Norwood said police told her.
A 17-year-old boy and 41-year-old man have been charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in connection with the case.
Jackson and Norwood remembered Wilson as an amazing cook, someone who loved to work on mini motorcycles and someone who was close with his older and younger brothers. His birthday was one day apart from his younger brother’s.
Birthdays were always a big deal, so it was upsetting to Wilson when he missed his birthday the year his brother was born.
“He was mad,” Jackson said. “He was like: ‘Mama, I don’t get to have no birthday party because I got to be here in the hospital because I’m having my brother.”
Jackson laughed at the memory.
“After that, they always had their birthdays together,” she said.
As he got older and learned to cook more from his late great-grandmother, Phylisa Jackson, Wilson started helping cook at those birthday parties for himself and his younger brother, Ajohntis Jackson, and at other family gatherings.
He especially was good at cooking sweets, but he also liked to cook barbecue. He was known to bake a four-layer German chocolate cake that he made for his grandmother, Rita Fisher.
A few years ago, Wilson and his great grandmother made the chocolate cake and a sweet potato pie for a family friend to sell at their newly opened restaurant at 17th and Poplar.
“And oh my God. He was like ... you need to patent these pies,” Jackson said, adding that the restaurant owner tried to pay them $30 a pie when Phylisa Jackson told the man they couldn’t accept money.
“We cook out of love,”’ Ciana Jackson remembers her grandmother saying.
Wilson also had a hobby of buying parts and putting together different types of toy vehicles, like mini motorcycles, which he sometimes would sell. He built a custom go-kart for his brother’s 12th birthday.
Norwood said the 17-year-old boy charged with shooting Wilson had been friends with her boyfriend when they started dating over three years ago. She didn’t know what led to the shooting.
She and Wilson planned to marry and have children.
“He was sweet, kind-hearted, he cared about those around him,” she said. “He was a quiet person. ... He was very respectful.”
After the shooting, Norwood got out of the car to check on Wilson, who had stepped out during the shooting. Police arrived immediately after being flagged down by a witness. An officer performed CPR, but Wilson died at the scene.
Norwood said the “strength of God is keeping me” strong.
Ciana Jackson said she’s also relying on God.
“I’m just praying. I pray for that boy as well,” she said. “He is never going to see daylight of freedom. … It’s so sad because they are young. … It can’t be nothing but the devil.”
She added: “I believe my baby is in heaven and that he got his crown and that he is up there kicking it with God. And he don’t have a care in the world now.”
A funeral is still being planned.
‘Thought I was going to die’: Wichita woman recalls parking lot attack that killed boyfriend
