This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.
Zeremiah Smith’s talent knew no bounds.
In high school, family and friends often saw him—Nikon camera in hand—documenting moments with his Jim Hill High School bandmates. He played cymbals alongside his older brother, Zaccheaus.
He photographed fellow soccer players. Other times, he turned the lens on himself, snapping self-portraits.
From a young age, Smith put a lot of effort into his appearance, his mother, Kysia Owens, remembers. When he got dressed for school, he favored styles like button-downs and bow ties, polo shirts and blazers.
His aunt, Shanna Owens, remembers what an enthusiastic dancer he was, too.
At the family’s gatherings, they always ended up dancing together, she told the Mississippi Free Press. “He loved to dance—make sure you put that in (the article),” she said.
‘Ready to Come Home’
Zeremiah Smith made friends with other artists and athletes but at home, his family witnessed his private battle to stay alive. While he had many talents, he also had a learning disability and was on a school-based individualized education program, or IEP, plan.
He struggled with reading and some classmates teased him over the way he dressed, Kysia Owens told the Mississippi Free Press.
She remembers, too, the blunt attitude of one of his high-school teachers who tried to convince her—because of his disability—that he would likely graduate with a special-education certificate of completion instead of the standard high-school diploma.
Her son, standing next to her, dropped his head in shame, she recalled. “I said, ‘No sir, put your head back up,’” she said.
When her son did graduate from high school with his standard diploma, he “walked across that stage like he was climbing up mountains,” Owens said.
It was the bullying he suffered from people who his mother said “didn’t understand him” that weighed on his psyche and slowly eroded his vibrant personality.
She supported him in every way she knew how: They talked openly about his struggles, prayed together, and she took him to therapy. But those negative comments replayed in his head.
One day while they were home, she stood by his bedroom door and listened as he prayed: “Lord, I’m tired. I’m ready to come home. This is just a traveling place for me. I’ve seen and done all I need to see, and it’s too many mean and cruel people here. So Lord, I’m ready to come home with you.”
He made the first of several attempts to take his own life at 15. It was not the last time she would hear that prayer.
By 20, Zeremiah had enrolled in filmmaking and production courses at Hinds Community College. But his mental health continued to deteriorate, his mother said.
‘Des Would Listen to Him’
Suicide-prevention advocates will tell you that suicide does not happen in a vacuum.
It is usually not one experience, but compounded, layered experiences over time that take such a toll on a person’s mental health until they decide taking their own life is the solution to their pain.
In addition to the persistent bullying he experienced, Zeremiah Smith struggled to reconcile with the death of his 21-year-old cousin Deswaund Bell—known affectionately as ‘Des,’ who died from a fatal gunshot at a gas station on University Boulevard in 2016.
Bell was a father to twin daughters, a rapper and the co-owner of a pool hall in West Jackson.
Shanna Owens, Bell’s mother and aunt of Zeremiah Smith, told the Mississippi Free Press that the sudden, violent death of her eldest son had a profound effect on the family. “He always felt like he had to protect us,” she said.
“When I took sick, Des had some of his friends come build me a ramp so I could get in and out of the house,” Owens, a cancer survivor, said. “So (his death) hit hard because I lost my protection. His children lost their daddy.”
Smith often confided in Bell about his mental-health challenges, Shanna Owens said. “Some people would say little things but ‘Des’ would listen to him,” she recalled.
Before her son’s death, the cousins planned to travel to California together as Bell pursued a career in music, Owens told the Mississippi Free Press.
Smith, a talented visual artist, would go with him to help market Bell’s first CD. He had already started designing the artwork for the CD’s cover when Bell died.
Alex Dixon, 31, later turned himself in for Bell’s killing. Jackson Police reported the two had a brief argument inside the gas station before Dixon opened fire.
It marked Jackson’s 57th homicide of 2016, reflecting a larger trend of gun violence affecting families across the nation.
Although recent data show gun violence is trending down, a 2023 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that one in five Americans has reported losing a family member to a shooting—including suicide.
Gun violence disproportionately affects Black and Latino families, KFF’s findings reflect.
One-third of Black adults have a family member who was killed by a gun, twice the share of white adults who say the same, the survey found. Additionally, one-third of Black adults and Hispanic adults reported worrying either “every day,” or “almost every day” about themselves or someone they love being a victim of gun violence (compared to 1 in 10 white adults).
Although a judge sentenced Alex Dixon to 35 years in prison for Deswaund Bell’s killing in 2022, Nick Meyerson, a researcher with the John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, said punitive measures like incarceration don’t address the root causes of violence or the residue of trauma that remains after these incidents.
“It’s just thinking about people who perpetrate gun violence. It’s not thinking about the victims. It’s not thinking about the communities that are impacted,” Meyerson told the Mississippi Free Press in an interview in June of this year. “It’s not thinking about the trauma and the anxiety and depression that family, friends, or people who are affected feel after an incident occurs.”
‘The Tree’
National data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that suicides in Black males rose more than 25% between 2018 and 2023.
Anthony Davis, a licensed professional counselor, told the Mississippi Free Press he’s seen an uptick in Black men seeking mental-health services at his Flowood-based private practice in the past couple of years.
He attributes that increase, in part, to residual impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The stress during that time, the emotional distress due to depression and anxiety, teenagers were isolated—that brought up the number of young Black males we have here in the clinic,” he explained.
Davis said a person may show signs, such as isolating themselves from loved ones, no longer participating in activities they previously enjoyed or exhibiting uncharacteristic irritability, before verbalizing they need help.
“One of the first things you want to do is pay attention to what they’re actually saying. If they say, ‘I feel hopeless. I feel helpless. I have no reason to live,’ they feel trapped, almost like they have an unbearable pain,” Davis told the Mississippi Free Press.
He says these are “trigger words” that warn a person is “crying out to you verbally, not saying exactly, ‘I want to hurt myself,’ but letting you know ‘I’m on the verge.’”
Of course, before her son’s death, Kysia Owens had become intimately familiar with these signs. In the two years after Deswaund Bell’s 2016 shooting death, Owens said, her son retreated further within himself.
The young man who once took great pride in his appearance had to be coached to keep up his hygiene, she said. He removed the TV from his bedroom and put up curtains to block any light that might have come in through the windows.
He spent more and more time alone.
Eventually, he talked with family about planning his own funeral—from what band would play to the suit he wanted to be buried in, Kysia Owens said.
She was clocked in for work on April 6, 2018, when she got a call from a relative. They had found her son’s body in the family’s backyard.
“My mom actually called and all she said was ‘the tree.’ I knew then that was it because he had already attempted before,” Owens said.
It was his sixth attempt at taking his own life.
After his death, his mother said, tributes poured in from friends and former classmates. It was bittersweet seeing the impact he made on people’s lives.
“I was both happy and sad. Everything I was teaching him, he got it, but he shared it with other people. People recognized his goodness, but he didn’t see it,” she said.
Branches of Faith
One October afternoon, while she had a few hours of respite between her day job as a Jackson Public Schools educator and overnight shifts as a counselor for 988, the national suicide crisis hotline, Kysia Owens stands in the living room of her home, sifting through a clear, plastic storage bag.
Inside are traces of the life her son lived—his Jim Hill High School band jacket, school yearbooks, soccer jerseys.
Outside of work, she runs the nonprofit, Branches of Faith: Zeremiah’s Safe Haven, through which she travels the state speaking at churches, schools and community events about bullying and mental health.
She shares the story of her son and nephew, Nathaniel Owens, a married father of four who died by suicide in 2022.
Shanna Owens, sitting on a chair in the living room, told the Mississippi Free Press she often marvels at her sister’s strength and candidness in talking about the tragedies their family has faced.
While she said she understands the sentiment, Kysia Owens doesn’t believe she’s any stronger than anyone else. “I get it so much, and I always say I don’t like it because we’re all strong in our own ways,” she said.
“It’s just (a matter of) how we figure out how to navigate through our situation, you know … how we push through. I can say that I have a great support system,” she continued.
In a couple weeks, on Nov. 27—what would have been Zeremiah Smith’s 28th birthday—his mother will place balloons near the tree where he took his own life.
The family holds a ceremony in the backyard every year on April 6—the anniversary of Smith’s death—to honor Zeremiah, Deswaund, Nathaniel and the lives of other loved ones they’ve lost.
“I feel like the only way he dies is when I die. As long as I say his name, he’s still alive—even in spirit,” Kysia Owens said. “We try to keep all their names alive.”
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