LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — In this season of celebration, a Little Rock family is mourning.
They are asking for help finding the killer who took a young mother and her child away from them four days prior.
Jameika Lewis, 23, and her son, Ja’Shun Watson, 2, were murdered in the parking lot of the Eagle Point Apartments on December 27, their bodies found on the ground just outside her car.
Their family and friends met outside the apartment complex’s gates Monday evening for a candlelight vigil and a public plea for help.
“I want justice,” Pamela Lewis, Jameika Lewis’ mother, said Monday. “I want you to come forth. Man up! I mean, cause an act that you did, you were a coward, so come forward. Take your sentence. Oh, cause you’re going to get sentenced one way or the other. If you don’t get locked up here, baby, when you die, you’ve got to answer for judgement. You’re going to be held accountable.”
Representatives from Arkansas Stop the Violence and Say’s Stop the Violence helped lead the candlelight vigil, and approximately 30 people prayed and sang together. Pamela Lewis also addressed them with the words she would say to her daughter’s and grandson’s killer.
“That was a cowardly act that you’ve done! And you must pay,” she said. “Justice will prevail. It may not be today nor tomorrow, but it shall come forth as pure gold. You shall not sleep. You shall always be in agony, because you cannot do the righteous wrong. And my baby was a child of God. Her baby was innocent. My child was so kind, she would help any and everybody. And then, to do her like this? No more. But God, He is able to do all things exceedingly and abundantly according to His will.”
Pamela Lewis remembered her daughter as her best friend, saying they had a relationship like characters played by Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum in the show “Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.”
“She’d come over to the house, even though she was grown, and get right in bed up under me,” Pamela Lewis stated. “And I would recall saying, and I used to tease her, ‘you’re too grown to lay up under me.’ Well, guess what? I’m cherishing those memories right now, because I can’t get them no more.”
But Pamela Lewis and her husband have new memories to create. Their daughter gave birth to a baby girl two weeks before she and her son were killed.
“I’ve lost two souls, but God gave me an angel,” Pamela Lewis said. “That baby girl of ours is a gift, and we’re gonna raise her the way her mother wanted her to be raised.
“I look at my front door waiting for my grandson to come through, saying Pawpaw and Mawmaw. First thing he’d do, run to us in our bedroom. We don’t have that any more. But we’ve got memories. And those memories, we’re gonna forever cherish. We’re gonna talk to the sister about her mother, and how precious her and her brother was.”
Her faith and her granddaughter have given her strength in the last few days, as has a support network she claims has been there for her in every way. It is a strength she knows the killer of her daughter and grandson does not possess.
“You can run,” she said, “but you can’t hide! Because we serve a mighty god!”
Pamela Lewis said she has returned many times since the killing to Isaiah 48:22, “There is no peace for the wicked, thus said the Lord,” because it gives her comfort that the killer’s conscience will get the best of him/her.
“I’m hurting. I’m heartbroken. But, see, the god that I serve, I know He is able, and He is keeping me,” she stated. “That’s all it is. I could’ve been lost my mind, but I keep my mind staying on Him, because He will keep me in perfect peace at all times. See, I wanted revenge, but I know justice is gonna be done. That’s not the answer. There’s enough black-on-black violence. I got people in my family, they want revenge, but I’ve talked to them and told them: let God handle this. Let the police handle this, because justice is going to prevail.”
The Little Rock Police Department announced Monday afternoon that there is a $50,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction in the murders of Jameika Lewis and Ja’Shun Watson. Anyone who believes they know something that could help detectives is asked to call 501-371-4660.