Kenisha Brown was preparing to watch her daughter, Kiara, head off to prom and walk the stage at graduation, but those senior year rituals came to end when a man killed her daughter.
“He took my baby,” Brown told Milwaukee’s told WTMJ-TV. “He turned himself in, but it’s not going to make me feel better. It’s not going to take the pain away.”
Police say 19-year-old Marvin Patterson turned himself in after fatally shooting Kiara, his ex-girlfriend. Though Patterson claimed he pointed the gun at the teen while they talked but didn’t intend to kill her, Kiara’s family believes he intentionally took her life.
“This is someone who clearly let jealousy play a huge role,” Kiara’s aunt, Trinity Brown, said.
According to Kiara’s family, the teen and Patterson had been broken up for over a year, but he’d recently re-established contact. When Patterson showed up at her house on March 26 and said he had something to show her, Kiara’s family did not think it would be the last time they saw the promising teen alive.
“It was out of the blue. She didn’t plan on heading anywhere. She thought she was going to come out and go back in and he drove off,” Kenisha Brown said. “I’ve got so much anger in me now. It hurts so bad.”
Kiara’s friends and family describe the Vincent High School senior as a bright young woman who was beloved by many. According to her aunt, who established a GoFundMe page to cover the cost of Kiara’s funeral, the teen was “the most sweetest child and young adult I knew. Simply Beautiful inside and out.”
“She was a beautiful spirited young woman, who came from good family values. A student who attended Vincent High School and has worked a job for over a year,” her aunt wrote on GoFundMe. “She had many friends and everyone who knew her loved her.”
Patterson has been charged with first-degree reckless homicide, and Milwaukee police are trying to determine if domestic violence was a factor in Kiara’s death.