Tips needed for double homicide probe
More than six years after her son was killed, Kimberly Starghill is able to laugh as she thinks about her son, Javon, at a grocery store.
“He was one of those that you had to tell him what not to touch,” Starghill said.
Javon Starghill, 21, and Jeremy Head, 25, were shot around 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 9, 2014, as they sat inside a car in front of a home on Harland Drive on the South Side. A 17-year-old girl also was shot but survived.
Head died at the scene. Javon Starghill was rushed in critical condition to Ohiohealth Grant Medical Center, where his mom said a nurse had taken photographs of her son’s tattoos to help identify him while he was in surgery.
Kimberly Starghill held onto
hope for seven days, but her son died from his injuries on Jan. 16.
Javon left behind four children, including his youngest child who was not born until after his death.
Starghill said her son was always kind and thinking about others, including as a child when he gave his firstgrade teacher $3 “to get herself something nice.”
Javon was an organ donor who helped to save four lives. Knowing her son is living on through others helps Kimberly Starghill with grieving the loss of her son as well as Head, who was one of Javon’s closest friends. But it isn’t closure.
“We’re really fighting for justice,” she said. “It was a double homicide and an attempted murder. You’ve got to be really cold-hearted to try to shoot and kill three people.”
About six months after the shooting, police arrested a 19-year-old man in connection with the homicides. Those charges were dismissed, however, after the man passed a polygraph test and an identification by a witness was not definitive.
“I know (an arrest is) going to impact so many families and not just mine,” Starghill said. “There are other families involved plus whoever did it, their family too. It’s going to feel good for me to get justice, but it’s hurtful because someone will lose their child to a crime.”
Starghill is starting a support group for other parents who have lost children, with the first meeting taking place at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Essence Lounge, 1884 Tamarack Circle. The group, Journey to Just Surviving, uses Javon’s initials and will provide Starghill with an opportunity to help others who are thrust into the unenviable place she has been in since January 2014.
“When you lose your child and you have other kids, you still have to be their mother, you still have to provide and work and be a spouse and live, even when a part of you has just died,” Starghill said.
Anyone with information should call Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at 614-461-TIPS, submit an online tip at www. stopcrime.org or use the free P3 Tips mobile application. Tips to Crime Stoppers are anonymous, and tips that lead to an arrest could result in a cash reward.