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Quest Is Dead (pt.1)
Saturday, January 31, 2009

Quest J. was the nephew of a friend of mine. He was senselessly killed in November of last year (2008) by an angry, impulse-driven young man with a gun. Quest was the fourth member of my friend’s very large family to die by gun violence. Since that shooting, my friend has lost still another nephew. FIVE. Still my friend is strong, hard on the trail of a teacher’s certificate in elementary ed. I stand in profound admiration; I would be a gibbering idiot in some rubber room. But I am a white doctor’s son. They are black.

Racism, the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, the American version of Apartheid, particularizes itself to the West Side of South Bend, Indiana, in November, 2008. Like a jackboot, it comes whomping down on a big extended loving family. It’s been there before . . .

I’m going to quote extensively from issue #27, the last issue of year 2008, of Sight 360 a small black-owned magazine, published in South Bend, Indiana, by J. Findley May Jr. (subscription address: P.O. Box 3225, South Bend, IN, 46616). My comments in between are in [brackets].

Bystander Quest Jackson Victim of Domestic Violence An Inter view by J. Findley May Jr.

Quest Jackson, 32, originally from South Bend, was in town from Indianapolis with his daughters visiting family and friends for the weekend. On Saturday night November 1, 2008, he and his cousin Adrian Vanison, 327, were visiting at the home of a woman and her cousin on Sibley Street in South Bend. Dakevee Wiggins, 30, allegedly came to the house to talk with his girlfriend, the woman’s cousin, but was denied entry. Sunday morning, he returned and was still refused entry or access to talk with his girlfriend.
Around ten that morning, Quest and Adrian left the house walking. They were headed to Carlisle Street to their relative’s house, about eight blocks away. As they were on Johnson Street, approaching Linden Street, Dakevee Wiggins allegedly drove up and shot six times. Two bullets hit Quest and at least one bullet missed Adrian, passing through his coat. Quest died en route to the hospital. Dakevee was charged with murder and attempted murder.

[That’s the fact situation. Next, author May lets some of the principals tell their story. Here are some excerpts.]

A. V. (cousin): “About nine or ten that night [Saturday], Kevee came over ad started banging real hard on the door. He wanted to talk to his girlfriend. Quest and I were telling her to go out and talk with him to see what he wanted, but she didn’t want to go out there. Finally he left when he saw that no one was going to answer the door.
“ . . . I guess Kevee’s girlfriend was telling Quest that she didn’t want to mess with Kevee anymore; she was done with him. . . . We really didn’t think too seriously about what had happened. We stayed up until three or four o’clock that night, which was Sunday morning.
“ . . . Some time around nine o’clock that morning Kevee came back over again, doing the same thing: banging on the door, wanting to talk to his girlfriend. This time, Kevee’s girlfriend’s cousin went out and talked to him, but he didn’t want to talk with her. He wanted to talk to his girlfriend. I guess his girlfriend’s cousin told Kevee that her cousin didn’t want to talk to him and that she said that she wasn’t coming out . . . He said something like ‘She’s going to have to come (or go) home sooner or later.’ I guess maybe they had been staying together . . . We still didn’t think too seriously about Kevee.

[The two men started for Adrian’s sister’s house to pick up Quest’s daughters.]

“Without us noticing a car had been traveling down Johnson Street toward us. When it got to usm it slowed down. The driver’s side of the car was facing us with the window rolled down. Inside was Kevee, but, at the time, I didn’t know who he was. He had a gun, All this stuff was happening really fast. I wanted to run but couldn’t because it was happening really fast. He began shooting and I jumped, trying to duck. I don’t exactly know how many times he shot, but it seemed like about five times. After shooting, he kept driving and turned right on Linden Street and sped off . . . Quest . . . fell to the ground . . . He never said anything else . . .
[Adrian called the police, who sent an ambulance. Quest was still alive when the ambulance came, but he died on the was to the hospital.]

“I just keep reliving that day. Every day that I wake up. I thin about what happened to Quest. I have trouble sleeping . . . I’m anxious if I’m out walking. I look over my shoulders, observing every car that goes by. Quest and I were real close, ever since we were little kids. This is just crazy. None of this makes sense, taking a life in a moment of rage.”

C. A. (aunt): “When we drove up to the entrance of the hospital, we saw the family crying, screaming, and hollering . . . That’s when everyone began running toward the car to tell Fay that Quest was gone.”

F. S. (Quest’s mother): “Nobody knows how I feel. I’m still numb. Tomorrow, it will be a week when I lost my son.”

C. A.: “You have to realize, we never had this happen in our family before. Our people all have died of natural causes, stuff that God prepares you for. Even though God is there for these types of tragedies, it’s a different kind of hurt. We are having a hard time sleeping. We hear his voice and we can’t get him out of our minds. His presence is always there.”

F. S.: “That Saturday night, my son told me that e was going to play cards. I didn’t know that would be the last time I would see him. At the hospital, I went into shock. They were telling me that my son was dead, but my mind just refused to accept it. When I saw my son lying on the bed with tubes attached to him, my mind just shut down because the grief was too great. From that point to the present, I can’t sleep well at night.”

A. M. (cousin): “Davekee’s girlfriend . . . was through with him . . . I guess they were telling her to go talk to him, but she never would. Actually the girl (Davekee’s girlfriend) said that she had called the police, but the police said that there was nothing they could do because Dakevee wasn’t physically harming them or was on their property at the time, even though he may be riding up and down the street.”

C. A.: . . . “He got his mother’s car, got that gun, and came back. When he pulled up on Quest and Adrian, he (Dakevee) had the intentions of killing both of them. Because any time you shoot that many times, your intentions are to kill.”

A. M.: “ The newspaper, basically, said he was mad at his girlfriend. So he took it out on Quest and my brother.”

C. J. (uncle): “Basically, Kevee felt they were in there ‘doing’ his woman, and he didn’t like that. They weren’t going to let him in, and, to him, it was like a slap in his face to have two other men in a house with his woman, and he was supposed to be her man, but he was left outside.”

S. S. (aunt): “But they had broken up. That’s the point. She had a restraining order against him. My thing is that he was just a weak man. This girl wasn’t someone that Quest was seeing.”

C. J.: “I used to be a cadet for the police department, so I have seen a lot of incidents. But, still, t’s different when it happens to someone in your own family . . . Outside of losing my mother, walking into that room to identify the body was the hardest thing that I have dealt with in my whole life. Seeing Quest on that bed, I became numb (and I’m still numb, even now); . . .no words can explain the pain you feel when you are the first to view the body of a deceased loved one. Rest in peace, Quest. Rest in Peace.”

[To be continued.]

On New Year’s Eve , 2004 ,my beautiful son Patrick was shot to death in front of our home .A stranger killed him, and it was cruel and senseless as it could be. He was not robbed, there was “grudge”,no long -standing dispute. Patrick was a college freshman,with a bright and shiny future.He was courageous and kind and talented. His life was taken in an instant,so outrageously –by a high school dropout armed with a stolen handgun. Before his murder, Patrick was on fire talking about gun issues. We did not know why, he was not “at risk” as far as we know–he just told us that the conversation on guns needed to happen .Patrick died with a bullet to the chest, and his mother and father (and his best friends) watched him leave. As another New Year’s Eve closes –we remember Patrick and the many,many other gun violence victims taken from us in a fit of rage. May they not all be in vane.