The family of a Baltimore teen shot and killed by a 9-year-old boy has been working for more than a year to force the state to help children like him who have committed acts of violence.
Fifteen-year-old NyKayla Strawder died in August 2022 after being shot on her front porch. Since then, her family members have lobbied lawmakers in Annapolis to pass a bill in her memory that would mandate services for young children whose actions resulted in someone’s death.
But that journey to make one small change in the law has proven harder and more complicated than they’d ever imagined.
The latest unexpected turn came weeks ago when Strawder’s 31-year-old cousin learned lawmakers absorbed the language from the NyKayla Strawder Memorial Act into their marquee juvenile justice legislation.
Bolon Xi-Amaru was in Annapolis that same day and got word of the change from his state senator and the bill’s sponsor Sen. Jill Carter. He had just participated in a gun violence prevention rally on Lawyers Mall in his cousin’s honor. He went into the State House and stood behind a bank of television cameras pointed at lawmakers where he heard them say they’d taken language from the bill named after her.
“They never called us,” Amaru said. “They never asked us what we thought about it.”
They also stripped her name from the lines the family created in partnership with Carter.
Last session, the bill unanimously passed the Senate, but was never taken up in the House. The Baltimore Democrat introduced it again this year, and said she was not told her bill would be part of the larger juvenile package.
“I had no idea,” the Democrat said, adding she also didn’t learn of the contents of juvenile justice legislation until the day it had been publicly announced.
The story continues at The Baltimore Banner: A Baltimore family’s effort to pass a juvenile justice law gets tangled in Annapolis politics
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