14-Year-Old Boy Was Accidentally Shot Dead by Teen Relative: 'Our Family Was Torn Apart,' Says Mom

Julvonnia McDowell vividly recalls the last time she spoke with her 14-year-old son, Jajuan.

It was a warm day in April in 2016 and Jajuan planned to go to the movies with his grandmother.

“I said, ‘Okay, I love you, bud,’ because I always called him my rosebud,” recalls McDowell, 40. “He said, ‘I love you too, Mama.'”

The next time she would see Jajuan, he would be dead.

“There are so many gun owners who think, ‘My child is not going to touch it,’ but you never know,” McDowell tells PEOPLE. “Our family was torn apart.”

When McDowell arrived at the hospital after hearing her son had been shot, she says it was too late.

Victoria Stevens

“Every part of my being felt like it left my body,” she says. “I felt like my whole world was just gone.”

Last month, Goddard was one of six gun-violence survivors to participate in a roundtable discussion in New York City to talk about how the shootings turned their lives upside-down. (Watch the roundtable discussion onPeople Features: Gun Violence Survivors Speak Out.)

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“It’s been a constant struggle, but I continue to fight every day,” McDowell says. “And I have to live for my other son, for just that reason alone.”

source: people.com