‘Walk away,’ urge survivors of abuse victim who did not 

Walk away.

That’s the message that family members want to share following last Friday night’s shooting deaths of Emma Jackson and her granddaughter, Cearea Jackson, apparently by the hands the younger Jackson’s boyfriend.

“If you’re in a relationship and it’s bad, please don’t stay in it,” said Eloise Jackson, daughter of the elder victim and mother of the younger.

Jackson, her sisters, Jenny Green and Ruby Brown, niece Brittany Miller and nephew Lontezius Green met with Como Police Chief Earl Burdette at the Como Police Department Wednesday, supporting and encouraging each other to raise awareness of what can be at stake when domestic relations have a violent, dark side.

Cearea lived in fear, “all the time,” her mother said, of the man now charged with the double murder, Quendarius Brejuan Robinson, Cearea’s boyfriend and the father of her children, Quendarius, age four, and Quendez, two months. 

“She feared for herself, but she was more scared to walk away,” her mother added.

“She loved her kids,” Brittany Miller said.

“She probably never thought he was going to do it,” someone else said.

Eloise Jackson said that she had left the home her mother and daughter shared at 318 Church Street, “no more than 20 minutes before it happened.”

When she left, she saw no indication of what was about to happen.

“I don’t know what could happen in the time after I left that could (allegedly) trigger him to do what he did,” she said.

Cearea was well-liked, family members said. 

“She was always smiling when I saw her,” Burdette said.

Following graduation from Concorde University and the birth of her second son, Quendez, she found a job at an elderly care facility in DeSoto County where she enjoyed working with the older adults.

Her grandmother “loved the boats” — casinos in nearby Tunica — and enjoyed working the polls at the Como precinct during elections, family members recalled. She was the family matriarch who had three children of her own but who raised “all of us,” someone said, prompting a warm round of laughter.

“I believe I got the most whippings of the bunch,” Lontezius Green said, prompting more laughter.

“I didn’t have to get but one,” his cousin, Brittany Miller volunteered.

“We were all just together Thanksgiving,” someone else said.

But interspersed among good memories life before last Friday was the dark undercurrent of the tumultuous, abusive relationship that Cearea had seemed somehow unable to escape.

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In addition to fear, shame also keeps victims of abuse from seeking help.

“It’s not so much as scared as it is shame,” said another family member, a niece, who had found herself in an abusive relationship, escaped it and who will remain unidentified for her safety.

She said shame that a relationship was not as it appeared to others kept her in a relationship with an abuser. “He’s so good to you,” her friends would remark when he showered her with gifts. He professed his love and then his regrets after bouts of abuse. Repeatedly, she said.

“Shame? Put it behind you. Go to a police officer; go to someone you can trust,” she said.

“There’s no last time; it’s always going to be a next time,” Burdette said, repeating advice that he tries to use to convince victims to permanently exit abusive situations.

The formerly abused niece said that her boyfriend was smart enough to deliver blows to her torso where they would be covered by clothing, leaving no tell-tale black eyes and conspicuous bruising that would invite inquiry.

When she threatened to end their relationship because of the abuse, he would write passionate letters of apology, stating that he could not live without her and threatening suicide if she left him.

She reasoned: “If he’s going to kill himself, he’s going to kill me, too,” she said.

There’s still a fist-sized hole in the sheetrock wall of her apartment, a reminder of his last abusive visit, she said.

By then, she knew better than to threaten to end the relationship. Instead, she pleaded for “a few days apart,” she said. He agreed and left. She changed the locks and called police.  She has not seen him since, and considers herself lucky, she said.

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Como has embraced the survivors since Friday night. It is a small town where everybody knows everybody else. 

“The whole town is just family,” Eloise Jackson said. 

They held a candlelight vigil last night to honor the memory of the two slain women. Tomorrow their funerals will be held at the Second Baptist Church Fellowship Center in Coldwater. (Service begins at 10 a.m., visitation tonight, 5 to 7 p.m. Felix Cauthen Funeral Home has charge of arrangements.)

“If someone tells you they love you today and they hit you tomorrow, that ain’t it,” the niece said.

Walk away.