Jemaris Jarmel Leek Jr., a 17-year-old Black male, was still riding the momentum of a busy life in Lansing, Michigan—school, football, and the ordinary pull of family—when the night turned sudden and irreversible. In the earliest hours of June 16, 2021, Lansing police were called to the 2900 block of East Jolly Road and found him suffering from gunshot wounds. He was rushed to the hospital, but despite the effort to save him, he died from his injuries at Sparrow Healthcare System.
In the days that followed, the shooting left a raw ache across the city and, in particular, within the Everett High School community, where he had been known as a football player and a familiar face to classmates. Those who loved him remembered a teenager who moved between the serious and the playful—driven enough to care about school, energized by sports, and closely tied to his family’s day-to-day life at home.
As detectives worked the case, an arrest came quickly. Police identified Jaydin Devon Wilder as the suspect and took him into custody on June 25, 2021. Prosecutors charged Wilder with murder, felony firearm, and carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent in connection with the shooting, and he was arraigned in 54-A District Court, where he was denied bond.
The case ultimately ended not in an unsolved question, but in a conviction and a long prison sentence. Michigan Department of Corrections records show Wilder was convicted by plea of second-degree murder for an offense dated June 16, 2021, and was sentenced on February 1, 2023, to a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 75 years in prison. Those same records list an earliest release date in 2051, reflecting the weight of the punishment imposed for Jemaris’s killing.
