‘6 bullets hit my child.’ Mother of shooting victim at Columbia apartment mourns daughter
Jamaica Dowling wanted to enter the world feet first, perhaps hinting at the dancer she would become.
“She gave me hell,” her mother, Ashley Leaphart, remembered of Jamaica’s birth in October 2001.
The problem was that in shifting to her feet-first position, Jamaica had wrapped her umbilical cord around her neck. Leaphart had to deliver Jamaica through an emergency cesarean section.
It was a harrowing lead-up to meeting her firstborn child, but Leaphart had expected a bold introduction.
“I used to always think of her as my tropical baby, she was so vibrant. Even when I was pregnant with her she would always kick and be all over the place,” Leaphart said. That’s why she was named Jamaica – her vibrant personality, clear since before birth.
Early Sunday morning, Jamaica died after being shot multiple times at a party in a college-focused apartment complex near Colonial Life Arena. She was 20 years old.
Jamaica was one of five people shot during the party at Greene Crossing apartments when a fight escalated and multiple people began shooting guns, according to police reports.
A 22-year-old male, a 19-year-old male and two 16-year-old males were also shot, but none sustained life-threatening injuries, according to police.
“I just want them to remember her name,” Leaphart said of Jamaica in an interview Tuesday. “Remember she belonged to a loving family, she had hopes, she had ambition. She just loved life.”
Leaphart remembers her daughter as a radiant, magnetic person full of surprises.
Jamaica learned to read as a toddler. Leaphart thought she was pretending at first, but the three-year-old was adamant about her skills, so one day she read her mother a paragraph from the local newspaper.
“And I looked at her, and I was like, ‘Baby, you can read,’” Leaphart recalled.
By the first grade, Jamaica was so far ahead of her classmates that her teachers asked her to read to the kindergarten classes.
“Instead of going to recess she would go down to the kindergarten hall and read to the children,” with a Dora the Explorer backpack stuffed with as many books as she could find, Leaphart said.
As she grew, she developed a love for dance. And she was good at it.
She mastered styles ranging from ballet to jazz and taught younger dancers at Dance South Inc., a studio on Two Notch Road.
And when she danced, other people got on their feet, too.
“She could start dancing and light up a room,” Leaphart said.
Jamaica graduated from Westwood High School in 2019 and planned to attend Winston-Salem State University in the fall to study choreography. She worked two jobs to prepare for her first college semester – days as a dance instructor and nights at UPS.
“I don’t want my child to have died in vain, as if she was just a typical child, a typical individual. She was extraordinary.” Leaphart said.
Leaphart got a call from one of Jamaica’s friends at 1:24 a.m. Sunday and was told Jamaica had been shot.
Normally it would take about 30 minutes to get from Blythewood, where Leaphart lives, to 810 Pulaski Street, where the shooting occurred. On Sunday morning, Leaphart made the drive in 12 minutes.
She arrived in time to see that Jamaica was already in an ambulance with a visible bullet wound in one of her legs. She remembered being told by EMS professionals to meet the ambulance at a local hospital. It took a while before she was allowed in. In the meantime, she told Jamaica’s father what had happened, and he left for the hospital as well.
They arrived back at the hospital separately. Eventually, someone escorted Leaphart down a quiet hallway into a room where Jamaica’s father was waiting with two of his friends. After about five minutes, doctors started coming into the room. Then, another man walked in.
“He announced himself as the chaplain of the hospital, and I looked at him and I just dropped my head,” Leaphart said.
Jamaica had been shot six times, the doctors told her – four times in the torso and twice in the leg.
She flatlined once and recovered after one bullet was removed, doctors explained to Leaphart. When they tried to remove the next bullet, Jamaica flatlined again. They couldn’t revive her.
“Just to think six bullets hit my child, the same one with the chunky cheeks … and that Dora the Explorer book bag full of books,” Leapart said before trailing off. “When I close my eyes I keep seeing this chaplain sitting in this chair, and I keep seeing these physicians coming in this room. And I keep seeing her laying on this gurney and I can’t get to her.”
Jamaica’s family celebrated her life in a vigil Tuesday afternoon at the studio where she found her passion for dance. The family is working to schedule a funeral as well.
The Columbia Police Department and Richland County coroner’s office continue to investigate the incident, but no suspects have been named.
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
