JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A mother is in the final stages of having a Jacksonville street named in honor of her daughter, Tiphne Hollis, who was killed 15 years ago in a drive-by shooting.
RELATED: Tiphne Hollis’ mother, students march for justice 12 years after her murder
Hollis was just 16 years old when she lost her life in 2010 while riding in a car with her cousins and friends on Calvin Street. Her case remains unsolved.
Since Tiphne’s passing, her family has organized marches through the Mixon Town neighborhood, distributed flyers, and engaged with community members in hopes of finding answers to her tragic death.
Her mother, Shanda Whitaker-Ward, established the Tiphne Darshay Hollis Foundation and opened a school in Tiphne’s memory.
“We’ve been doing our best to do community outreach, we opened up the private school two different locations, we opened up the preschool two different locations so we’re doing everything that we can to continue to keep the community aware,” Whitiker-Ward said.
The goal is to have the street where the Tiphne Darshay Hollis Christian Academy is located named in her honor.
“We want to continue Tiphne’s legacy and this is one of them and it happened right here in this neighborhood,” Whitaker-Ward and Hollis said. “So we want people in this community to know that we’re not going to stop, we loved our baby. She was innocent, and it didn’t. It wasn’t supposed to happen. And so when they ride her down, when they ride down this road, they don’t always remember that name, Tiffany.”
They said they receive hope from what they do every day to keep her name alive.
“We receive hope through our family, from the strength of God,” they said. “Most importantly, we receive hope when you know we see another family smile because of what we’re doing...and knowing that one day through our efforts and prayer and things like that, that we will get justice, we will get answers, somebody’s going to come forward.”
Tiphne worked in a daycare when she was a teenager.
“This is something that we are continuing to keep putting hope for things into the children that we have here at our private school or in the community,” they said.
