by James A. Bacon
Our society has become inured to stories of drug dealers and other criminals shooting and killing one another on our cities’ streets. But we still maintain a capacity for outrage at the death of pure innocents — children and others who were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Such was the case with Sierra Jenkins, a 25-year-old Virginian-Pilot reporter who was hanging out with friends outside Chicho’s Pizza Backstage in downtown Norfolk around 1:30 a.m. Saturday as the bar was closing. Gunfire broke out, and she was caught in the crossfire. A total of five people were shot. Sierra was killed, one other person died from his wounds, and three others were hospitalized.
A Norfolk native, Jenkins graduated from Granby High School, earned a B.A. degree in journalism from Georgia State, worked as an intern at Atlanta Magazine and CNN, and joined the Pilot in 2020, where she covered education. Her editor called her a passionate journalist and “a bright and talented woman with so much going for her.”
“Everyone loved her,” her father Maurice Jenkins told the Pilot. “She was such an energetic, caring and giving person. A real go-getter. She’d do anything for anyone.”
Jenkins’ tragic story received more than the usual coverage in the media, including an article in the New York Post. If she hadn’t been a newspaper reporter, though, her shooting most likely would have been treated, ho, hum, as another inner-city killing, the likes of which are so routine as to barely warrant a one-time mention in local news outlets, and which the media really don’t want to call attention to for fear of upsetting favored narratives.
Some lives matter more than others, I suppose.
