Avion Gregory Donell Donelson was a 16-year-old Black male from Jackson, Mississippi, born on December 31, 2008, to Albert Donelson and Lataisha Clark. Funeral notices listed his full name and confirmed that he died in his hometown on March 5, 2025, just weeks after his sixteenth birthday. Family obituaries described a teenager whose death left a deep void in the lives of his parents and extended family, and online memorials show candles lit in his honor and friends recalling his gentle nature.
One such memorial notes that he attended Lanier High School, situating him firmly in the world of a local Jackson student whose life should have been centered on classrooms, friends, and plans for the future rather than the violence that ultimately claimed him.
On Wednesday, March 5, 2025, Jackson police were called to the 3300 block of Memphis Street in west Jackson after reports of a shooting. Officers arrived to find a male victim, later identified as Avion Donelson, near the back of a residence along the street. Authorities said he had been shot multiple times, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Early reports from investigators indicated that the gunfire may have stemmed from some kind of disturbance, though they did not immediately explain what sparked it or how many people were involved. At that point there was no suspect information released, only a confirmation that another Jackson teenager had been killed by gunfire in a residential neighborhood.
His death came at a moment when Jackson officials were publicly focused on stopping exactly this kind of loss. Just a week earlier, the city had launched its “100 Days of Action” initiative, aimed at combating violence among young people. In the days after the shooting, Jackson’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery highlighted Avion’s killing alongside the fatal shooting of 21-year-old Jakendrick Bass later that same day, pointing to the two deaths as evidence of how quickly tragedy could cascade through the community. The office’s director spoke about “credible messengers” — people with firsthand experience in the criminal justice system — going into neighborhoods like the one on Memphis Street, talking with residents and different neighborhood factions in an effort to understand the roots of the conflict and to prevent retaliation. The message was that intervention needed to exist both before the yellow crime-scene tape went up and after it came down, so that what happened to Avion would not be repeated on another block.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, detectives with the Jackson Police Department asked for the public’s help and funneled tips through Crime Stoppers while they pieced together what had happened behind that Memphis Street residence. For nearly two weeks, publicly available information remained sparse, with only the basic outline—that a teenage boy had been shot multiple times and left to die near a home—circulating through local news reports and memorial pages. Then, on March 19, 2025, Jackson police announced a major development: they had arrested 43-year-old Jermaine Hilliard in connection with the killing. According to statements released that day, Hilliard was charged with murder, and officials emphasized that the investigation was still active, encouraging anyone with additional information about the shooting or its lead-up to come forward.
Subsequent entries in gun-violence databases recorded Avion as the victim and named Jermaine Hilliard as the suspect, noting that the suspect had been arrested and was not injured in the incident. Jail and inmate-locator records list a man named Jermaine Antonio Hilliard, born in 1981 and housed in the Hinds County Jackson Detention Center, with no clear release date and his status described simply as an inmate held at the county facility. These records, combined with the police announcement of the murder charge, suggest that as of late 2025 the case remains in the courts, with no widely reported trial or conviction yet made public.
While the legal case moves slowly, the personal and communal consequences of Avion’s death are already starkly defined. Obituary notices document the services held in March 2025 at a local church and cemetery in Jackson, giving formal shape to the farewell his family and friends were forced to make far too soon. Online memorials add a quieter layer: short messages from classmates and relatives, mentions of shared bus rides after school, and simple statements that he was kind, funny, and deeply loved. Each candle lit in his name and each news story that continues to reference his killing underscores that Avion Donelson’s life was more than the gunfire on Memphis Street, even as that violence now marks the line between who he was becoming and the future that was taken from him.
