Memorial grows for victims of Lester Street tragedy - WMC Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

Memorial grows for victims of Lester Street tragedy

Four-day-old crime tape blows in the wind. A Memphis Police barricade and CSI Command Post are still camped out in front of 722 Lester Street. But the street memorial grows.    

"We brought a teddy bear out here," resident Sonja Anderson said.

Anderson drove 30 minutes to do that.

She brought her 19 year old daughter Jernicka and her sister Annecka.

"We've been sitting at home looking at the news and it just touched our hearts," Sonja Anderson said.

Anderson said they had to do something.

"It's just a hurting feeling. How could somebody do that?  An innocent child?  Children, really," Sonja Anderson said.

She said there is a lesson for her daughter.

"Just to let her know you've just got to watch where you go, who you be with and just to watch your surroundings," Anderson said.

Jernicka has felt a roller coaster of emotions since she first heard two men, two women and two children were murdered in this house, three other children hospitalized.

"Fear, sad emotions, disgust, everything," Jernicka Anderson said.
 
And her mother's words seem to be sinking in.

"Watch your surroundings, just like my mother said," Jernicka Anderson said.
 
The family said the loss and brutality of the killings have touched a cord that is haunting to the community as a whole.

"I just send my prayers out to the family, everybody and I hope they find out who did it," Sonja Anderson said.

She said the surviving family and children have been in her prayers every day.

Click here to e-mail Kontji Anthony.