A young life senselessly snuffed out: ‘Strong-willed’ Johntaya Alexander was 21
April was Johntaya’s birthday month. She would have turned 22 on the month’s final day, April 30.
Instead, the dozens of votive candles crowding the sidewalk at 10th and K streets in downtown Sacramento, their flames still flickering Tuesday afternoon, told the stories of lives like Johntaya Alexander’s snuffed out just as hers was beginning.
“She was a strong-willed person in the prime of her life and she was killed in a senseless shooting,” her father John Alexander said in a Monday interview. “She was down there with her sister, trying to have a good time.”
Johntaya Alexander, 21, of Elk Grove was among the youngest of the six who were killed in the barrage of gunfire that wounded another dozen and sent yet more scrambling for their lives.
Three women and three men died in the massacre, the deadliest in Sacramento’s modern history. Two were 21, Alexander, and Yamile Martinez-Andrade, of Selma, near Fresno. The others ranged in age from 29 to 57.
Three men, including two brothers, have been arrested stemming from the mass downtown shooting. Brothers Dandrae Martin, 26, and Smiley Allen Martin, 27, remain held in Sacramento County Main Jail.
The third, Daviyonne Dawson, 31, was arrested late Monday, but posted $500,000 bail. Dawson will be charged as possessing a firearm despite being prohibited from having one, said law enforcement officials.
“It still doesn’t really feel real,” Krissten Hansen, 26, told The Bee at a Monday memorial vigil. “It just happened so fast but also in slow motion. Seeing everyone screaming and running. Seeing people on the ground and injured walking around was really hard because it could’ve been us.”
Johntaya was one of them. John Alexander got the terrified call from her older sister just as the shooting started.
“I found out just as it was going down, 2 a.m., just as she got shot,” Alexander told The Bee.
Alexander rushed downtown, but it was too late for Johntaya, he told The Bee.
“I was able to see her lifeless body laying there on the ground,” he said. Her sister was not injured.
Social media posts offering condolences and prayers quickly filled her and father John’s sites.
Typical were the words of Crystal Miranda of Antioch:
“You were just starting your life, and it was cut short,” she wrote. “May you rest in heaven Angel.”
“It’s overwhelming. It’s appreciated,” John Alexander said Monday of the posts, texts and phone calls in the incomprehensible hours after his youngest daughter’s death. “Just indescribable emotions as I read the captions and the texts — just so many friends who were willing to reach out to me in this time of need.”
Alexander’s own Facebook profile is posted without words, a silent memory of a father and his daughter together in happier times.
Johntaya Alexander was a headstrong 21, ready to chart her way to adulthood.
Social media posts show the young woman nicknamed “Jojo” was a formidable force even at 21, full of life, unafraid to speak her mind.
A recent graduate of Sheldon High School in Elk Grove, she wanted to go into social work.
Just months ago, in November, she had set out on her own in a new apartment that she was turning into a home, and planned a housewarming party to celebrate.
“She was a 21-year-old girl, coming into maturity,” Alexander said. “She was thinking about her life, working, trying to secure her life and goals.”
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