It was about four o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, August 1st, 2014 when Toure Jackson was walking home from work on Old York Road and witnessed the drive-by shooting.
"A guy started firing out the window. Then he got out and started firing,” said Jackson, “The guy and the girl started running. When they got about right here, the guy started doing this shooting. Both of them laid on the grass right here and the car took off. I heard somebody screaming, 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God! They shot my baby! They shot my baby!'"
Three-year-old McKenzie Elliott died when she was struck by a stray bullet striking a nerve in a city, which had become numb to the growing number of homicides on its streets.
With each passing day, month and year, the toddler's unsolved murder has haunted people here in the Waverly community.
"We never forgot her and they say if you remember them in your heart, she's never forgotten," said Carmel Brown, who is part of the Blessed Sacrament Church located just a few blocks away from the scene of the shooting, "We have a picture up in my parish center at my church where we did the tribute to McKenzie and her mother, but it was more like we were concerned about the mother and we see it every day."
"She's going through a lot,” added Cher Briscoe, “Trust me. She's going through a lot."
McKenzie's family has long since moved away from the neighborhood and workers are now preparing the vacant house to rent, but signs remain of the little girl who once lived and died here, and the anguish that accompanied her senseless loss.
"When I came past here and looked over here, he was on the porch with her and a guy was holding her in his hands screaming and hollering," recalled Jackson.
The community dedicated the street sign carrying the young girl's name, McKenzie Way, in May of 2015------the same month she would have celebrated her fourth birthday.
