DETROIT – It has been 365 days without justice for one family.
The family of TiKiya Allen came together Thursday night on Belle Isle one year after she was shot and killed while riding her bicycle outside of a friend’s house on Detroit’s west side.
Those shots were fired from a bright red Ford Taurus seen in the video player above that police have never been able to find.
The family is hoping that the killer will soon get caught.
“It doesn’t make sense to me that I’m standing here a year later,” said TiKiya Allen’s father, Timothy Allen. “I’m standing here being interviewed by you guys talking about the murder of my oldest daughter.”
“I’m just missing her,” said TiKiya Allen’s mother, Kai Cooks. “We all miss her.”
Read: Family still fighting for justice in death of 18-year-old girl shot while riding bicycle
The murder still weighs heavy on her parents.
“It’s very rough,” Cooks said. “I go to sleep with it every night.”
“These young men don’t know what they did,” Timothy Allen said. “Every day, I ride around the city looking at red Taurus’. Every time I see a red Taurus, I can’t tell you the state that it puts me in.”
TiKiya Allen’s siblings are also having a hard time without her.
“The fact that they’ll never see their little sister again, they wouldn’t know what words to put to how they feel,” Timothy Allen said.
TiKiya Allen’s grandmother says she is doing her best to put her anger aside.
“I’ll try to focus on the positive I can do to help another young person to live a full life because TiKiya will forever be 18,” said Bonnie Whittaker.
The family has created a book scholarship to honor TiKiya Allen called the TK Challenge at Oakland University, where she was studying as a freshman to become a nurse practitioner.
But a year later, the family says it doesn’t bring her back. And what pains them the most is that her friends and community leaders like Pastor Mo is that it’s been 365 days, and her killer is still out there.
“They can’t be man or woman enough to say you know what, ‘I did it, it was a mistake,’” said Pastor Mo. “Stand on it. You so tough. Stand on it.”
“If you know somebody who’s running around reckless like that, they need to be off the streets,” Timothy Allen said. “Somebody out there in this city knows who was in that car that day. They know.”
If you have any information, please contact the Detroit Police Department or Crime Stoppers at 1800-Speak-Up.
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