On August 8, 2023, 11-year-old A’Jaylyn Latrice “Bae-Bae” Waller, a Black African American female from Belzoni, Mississippi, was at home in the small Delta town often called the Heart of the Delta when an ordinary day slipped into tragedy. Belzoni, the seat of rural Humphreys County and known as a catfish-farming community, is a place where families are tightly woven into church life and neighborhood ties, and the Waller and Netters families were part of that fabric.
A’Jaylyn had been born in Belzoni on October 6, 2011, and from an early age was affectionately known by those around her as “Bae-Bae.” Her obituary and memorials describe a child whose “beautiful memories” would live on in the hearts of her parents, Terry Waller and Ashley Netters, and a large circle of brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. They speak of a family wrapped in grief yet anchored in faith, leaning on a favorite Bible verse about peace amid heartbreak. The funeral home notice and a Find a Grave memorial both record that she “bid this world goodbye” on Tuesday, August 8, 2023, at home in Belzoni, underscoring that the loss came not on some distant roadway or anonymous street corner, but in the place that should have been safest for her.
According to investigators, the quiet of that home was shattered when a gun in the hands of a child went off. The Humphreys County Sheriff’s Office received a call for a shooting at a residence just outside the city limits of Belzoni. When deputies arrived, they found that A’Jaylyn had been shot in the shoulder while her 12-year-old stepbrother was playing with a firearm; the weapon discharged and struck her, and she did not survive her injuries. Local reporting and the Gun Violence Archive both classify the incident as an accidental shooting in which a child was killed while another child handled the gun. The case is listed in national datasets of children killed by gunfire, marked by phrases like “playing with gun” and “child killed ” a stark shorthand for a moment of carelessness that turned fatal.
Law enforcement nevertheless treated what happened as a criminally negligent act. Officials reported that the 12-year-old stepbrother was taken into custody and held at the Yazoo County Juvenile Justice Center, a regional facility that detains young people while they await court proceedings, and that he was charged with manslaughter–criminal negligence. Public statements from investigators noted that the children had been home alone when the shooting occurred and that the case had drawn the involvement of the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services. Authorities also said that additional charges could be pending for the parents, though no public follow-up has documented whether such charges were ultimately filed. Because the accused is a juvenile, subsequent hearings and outcomes are largely shielded from public view, leaving the broader world with only the initial snapshot: a family relationship, a loaded gun, and a boy facing a manslaughter charge in a juvenile system designed to balance accountability with the possibility of rehabilitation.
In the days that followed, grief took on ceremonial form. Visitation for A’Jaylyn was held at New Life St. Paul Church of God in Christ in Belzoni, and a Celebration of Life service filled Upper Room Fellowship Ministries with mourners who knew her not as a statistic in a database, but as a daughter, sister, cousin, and friend whose laughter and presence had animated family gatherings and school days. After the service, her body was carried to Hooper Family Cemetery in nearby Silver City, where she was laid to rest among relatives in the red Delta soil. Online guest books and memorial pages are filled with messages from classmates and family who remembered her smile, her kindness, and the sense that she brought joy wherever she went, vowing to “keep your name alive” and to “love you forever 11.”
Beyond the churches and the cemetery, her name appears in national records that strive to bear witness to lives ended by gunfire. The National Gun Violence Memorial lists A’Jaylyn among the Americans killed with guns on August 8, 2023, and places her on a page that simply catalogs “Fatal shootings in Belzoni, Mississippi,” reminding readers that even the smallest Delta town is not insulated from the reach of firearms. Gun-violence databases index the incident as an accidental child shooting, while local coverage preserves the detail that the firearm was in the hands of a family member.
What is left in the public record is a story in two layers: the intimate portrait of A’Jaylyn Latrice “Bae-Bae” Waller, cherished by a large extended family and honored with scripture, song, and a princess-themed memorial image, and the stark official language of incident reports and court charges that mark her death as one more entry in the long ledger of children lost to unsecured guns. The legal outcome for the boy accused of causing her death may never be fully known outside the confidential walls of youth court, but the contours of the tragedy are clear: a moment’s access to a deadly weapon cost an 11-year-old her life, left another child entangled in the justice system, and carved a permanent absence into the life of a Mississippi family and their community.
