Donnovan Clayton’s sister waits for help
In a city rocked by violence in 2020, two killings stood out for their especially brutal senselessness.
One was the September driveby shooting of 11-year-old Ayshawn Davis, a beautiful, energetic child just entering middle school. The other ended the life of Donnovan Clayton, an 18-year-old preparing to graduate from Troy High School.
Donnovan, you may remember, was walking down Sixth Avenue on a Friday night in June when a bullet fired from a passing car struck the Troy teenager. Donnovan was found lying on the sidewalk and died shortly after at Samaritan Hospital.
Donnovan, as police put it, was at the wrong place at the wrong time. The bullet fired in the city’s North Central neighborhood, where he lived, wasn’t meant for him, police believe.
He was killed for no reason at all.
The tragedy was quickly compounded by another: Donnovan’s griefstricken mother, Caroline Clayton, suffered a stroke just after the killing and died, at the age of 48, two weeks after her son.
“That was one of the last things on her mind, that she lost a child,” said Donnovan’s older sister, Jasmine Baldwin, who has no doubt that her mother’s death was directly tied to her brother’s. One, she believes, would not have happened without the other.
Police have arrested and charged Jahquay Brown, 20, for the killing of Ayshawn Davis. That crime, it seems, will not go unpunished.
But seven months after Donnovan’s killing, police don’t know who fired the bullet. Though an effort headed by former Mayor Harry Tutunjian raised more than $10,000 for information leading to an arrest, nobody came forward.
“We’re not really getting too far with the investigation,” Deputy Police Chief Dan Dewolf admitted on Friday. “But we know somebody out there has information.”
As they ask for the public’s help, Troy police have released photos, taken from surveillance cameras, of two cars that passed through the neighborhood near the time of the shooting. One is a gold 2004 Acura TL. The other is a 2005 Audi A4, silver in color.
Police believe passengers of at least one of those cars know what happened on that June night. It is likely they were either directly involved, Dewolf said, or at least saw something that could help solve the case.
From her home in Michigan, Donnovan’s sister is waiting and hoping somebody steps forward. She’s seeking justice for her brother, of course, and her mother, too.
Jasmine described her brother as somebody who, like many teenagers, was still trying to figure out what path his life would follow. As he prepared to graduate from Troy High School, he was looking forward to his next chapter.
“I’m always going to be proud of my little brother,” Jasmine said Friday, noting that Donnovan was the primary caretaker for his mother, who suffered from significant health issues and could not walk.
I asked Jasmine what she might want to say to somebody who has information but is reluctant to come forward.
She responded by saying she understands the code of the streets demands that people stay silent. She knows speaking up would require courage, but imagine being in her shoes.
“Just imagine if it was your little brother or your little sister,” she added. “Think about if it was a member of your family.”
Donnovan hadn’t lived for long in Troy. He wasn’t especially well known in the city. Nevertheless, his killing was met with public indignation and grief.
A few days after, despite the ongoing pandemic, a crowd gathered in Troy’s Riverfront Park for a vigil that was partly a memorial service and partly a call an end to violence that, in 2020, felt relentless and particularly cruel. There were 14 killings in the city last year, an unprecedented number.
Jasmine was there on that warm summer night with other members of Donnovan’s family. She rose to tell the crowd what was wonderful about her brother, describing what her family had lost, what the latest senseless violence had stolen. She talked about her brother’s beautiful smile, how he could light up a room.
Later, as a church group sang, Jasmine stood in her flowered blue dress and wept. Many in the crowd cried with her.
On Friday, Jasmine asked me to relay her gratitude for the support she received from strangers in a city not her own. Troy showed it cared.
“We just got so much love when we were there,” she said. “It helped. It really did.”
But Jasmine needs more help, still. She needs somebody to come forward. She needs justice for Donnovan Clayton, and for her mother, too.