Sherae Honeycutt

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Original Post

Family members of children killed in the metro came together hoping for change at a meeting on Saturday.

They sat around a table next to people they would never have met if they didn’t lose someone incredibly important in their lives.

“We’re forgetting about these kids, and we’re just letting them die. We act like we don’t care, and we’re just walking around like it`s normal, and its not normal,” said Jasmine Parks, a cousin of Jayden Ugwuh and Montell Ross.

Montell’s mother, Aishia Coppage, stood in front of the group recalling what happened to her son.

“My son, he was shot first. He was shot first,” Coppage said.

Coppage lost her son, and nephew Jayden in 2016.

Police say someone shot into her home killing the boys, and the murders remain unsolved.

“They still don’t have anything. He stated that nothing from the tips hotline. Nothing,” Coppage said.

She’s hoping bringing families like hers together may help break the case.

“I’m standing here because I cannot allow for Jayden, and Montel, and the other babies to be forgotten about,” Coppage said.

Babies like Adrian Jones, whose father and stepmother tortured the boy, and fed his body to pigs in 2015.

Adrian’s grandmother, Judy Conway, is fighting for homeschool regulation, after his father and stepmother hid the abuse by homeschooling him.

“All you have to do if you want to homeschool a child in Kansas is go online, sign up your school, and give it a name. After that there’s no more contact with those children,” Conway said.

Conway would also like to see more advocates for at risk children.

“If DCF is not doing their job then the child advocate office can investigate what they’re doing. I really feel like if we had a child advocate office in the state of Kansas, Adrian would be here today,” Conway said.

Desirea Ferris’ family needs closure.

She was 18 when she went out with friends, and never came home.

Her family believes she may have been murdered.

“We have a task force of about ten of us that work on this every single day, looking for Desirea. We’ve had many searches, we get it on Facebook, we try to advertise it however we can, we’ve had big searches and have little searches, but we’ve basically just had to put together our own task force,” her step-aunt Angela Renfrow said.

The families are asking for help the only way they know how.

“We have to use our voices, we have to be heard, and we just all need to come together, because that’s what its about,” Conway said.

“I don’t understand why people are so quiet about children dying. We have to be advocates for these children, we have to be examples for these children, and we`re not,” Parks said.

If you have any information about Desirea Ferris or the deaths of Jayden and Montell, please call the tips line at 816-474-TIPS to help give these families some closure.

You can remain anonymous.