JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A local mother can't help but cry every time a life is lost to gunfire.
"I'm just tired of us working so hard to raise our children for the streets to take them. And then you're looking for ways to bury them," said Gwenda Green.
It's been more than 22 years. It was Aug. 31, 1990 when Green's son, Sheridon "Andre" Jones, 15, was shot and killed; an innocent bystander caught in the middle of a neighborhood battle outside his school in Virginia Beach.
"When my son died my whole family died. I mean it's not the same. I'm not the same. And I'm so sick of hearing about, I'm sorry, people getting killed every day," she said.
Green is taken back to that day every time she hears about another innocent life taken in an unnecessary shooting. She says in two decades, nothing has changed, making it impossible to find justice in her son's death.
"I feel like he died in vain, yes I do, but I see a lot of good that came out of it because I was able to donate my son's organs."
And several of them came to Florida. His eyes went to a woman right here in Jacksonville. Green received a letter from her thanking her for the eyes, saying she can now see her bingo cards.
Green moved here a few years later with one mission: take up bingo and find her.
"Going to the Lion's Club or wherever I go, I'm always looking around like I wonder who has my son's eyes."
And while she hasn't looked into those eyes yet, she's hopeful. It reminds her how many lives her son touched and saved in his short life.
"I just feel like his spirit is somewhere near. And that makes me feel like he didn't die in vain. Others are living through him," she said.
