Trauma of violence reverberates among youth

Fun-loving Sam Pollard Jr. won friends in his Jackson community but he had serious dreams of owning his own home.

Those dreams ended abruptly Feb. 25, 2021, when a close friend shot the 32-year-old dead on North Prentiss Street in west Jackson, leaving Pollard’s three children – two girls and a boy – to bear the trauma of violence that has scarred so many youth in Mississippi’s capital city.