PINE BLUFF, Ark. — A Pine Bluff family laid a 7-year-old murder victim to rest Saturday. Chloe Alexander was shot and killed in Little Rock exactly one week before.
According to police, she was in a car with someone who had a dispute with 18-year-old Kenjata Daniels. Daniels was taken into custody Thursday and charged with capital murder.
Chloe Alexander was only visiting Little Rock to go to the zoo and get her nails done when gun violence took her like, so it was home in Pine Bluff where her family said goodbye one last time.
“Roses are red. Violets are blue. I miss Chloe just like you. Chloe Alexander was the best girl I ever knew. I love you, Chloe” read Parker Edwards, poet and Chloe’s friend, during the seven-year-old’s funeral.
Her casket pretty in pink, adorned with the TikTok logo for her favorite pastime dancing on video.
“It really what broke my heart because now a princess is gone from us,” lamented Geneva Buckhanan who taught Chloe Alexander in kindergarten at Edgewood Elementary.
Buckhanan was one person in a packed auditorium who remembered the girl who always smiled.
“No matter who was around her at the table she would get along with them, and she talked. She loved to talk,” Buckhanan said.
Chloe had talked to her first-grade teacher about her summer plans during the final week of school. Getting her nails done and trips with her family never happened because a gunman took her life.
The question was asked a couple of times in the ceremony why was the youngest in the car shot and killed.
“How is it that the bullet found her? Out of everyone in the car, how did the bullet find Chloe?” Eulogizer James Gray asked.
The arrest of the suspect, 18-year-old Kenjata Daniels Jr. was a huge weight off the shoulders of everyone. They preached what happens next is in God’s hands just like little Chloe who they said is in God’s hands now too.
Many tears were shed but the ceremony ended in dancing just as Chloe would have it.
“It was not unusual for me to remind her students walk, not dance, in the halls,” Chloe’s 1st-grade teacher Donna Depriest said.
Buckhanan said, “That leaves a cherished memory in our hearts. Chloe, a little princess.”
There was an increased $25,000 reward that led to the arrest of Chloe’s killer. While she’s laid to rest, he’s locked up for capital murder with no bond.