Regginna Jefferies: 17-year-old killed at Oakland vigil
Seventeen-year-old Regginna Jefferies gathered Wednesday with mourners to remember two drowning victims. They died too young, people said. Gone too soon, others remarked.
Now Regginna is among them: Gone too soon.
In a horrific incident that Oakland, California is still trying to understand, Reginna was shot to death after gunfire erupted the vigil, sending three other poeple to the hospital with injuries.
Samantha Youngman, speaking to ABC News, said she heard what sounded like firecrackers and made it to a window, "looked out and saw people running."
Witnesses said Regginna had performed in the vigil to honor the two victims, who died during the Memorial Day weekend.
“It was a celebration,” Shayla Jamerson told KPIX. “She had just done a beautiful praise dance which I saw on Facebook — just hurt me more.”
“I’m mad,” Jamerson was quoted as saying. “This girl had nothing to do with anything. Can’t we just let our youth grow up?”
Donnie Briggs, identified by KPIX as a cousin of one of the drowned boys, wrote on Facebook that the violence started over a petty game: "Some IDIOTS started fighting over a dice game, someone pulled out a gun, shots were fired.”
The shooting has shocked many in the community, especially on the heels of the Orlando nightclub massacre in which nearly 50 people were slaughtered by a terrorist.
“The really scary thing, coming on the heels of the shooting in Orlando, you wonder is it gang related or is it a crazy gunman,” Mason Stone, a bystander, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I guess you figure sooner or later if you live in a city like that you ... realize anything can happen at any time.”
