GAINESVILLE, Va. — The inequity between what her children have and what they deserve grows wider each year, as every Mother’s Day since 2017 marks the death of a parent they’ll never know.
Sharayne Holland’s younger child, now four, is old enough to express exasperation, and increasingly, the beginnings of painful dissatisfaction. He can only adore pictures of his mother and does not understand why she ceases to exist in flesh and blood.
“'I don’t want to keep kissing this picture,'” Pharaoh's grandparents recounted, as he protested to his sister, Zahara. “'I want to hug, and touch Mommy.'”
Holland’s older child, Zahara, is still in a precarious position. She remains in remission from leukemia, but she’s seen specialists for years now without her mother to hold her during check-ups. Doctors diagnosed the 5-year-old with Down Syndrome shortly after birth -- an attribute, her grandparents say, which keeps her gaze on the beauty in the world.
It hasn’t drifted towards an understanding of the wickedness which permeates her life, yet.
The 2017 Mother’s Day murder of Sharayne Holland remains unsolved, a case among the most atrocious and audacious killings the commonwealth has confronted in recent memory.
The 26-year-old Prince William native was at a party in one of Richmond’s nightlife districts on May 13, 2017. It was Holland’s first time out in two years, her parents said, as she finished a second degree. An argument among acquaintances spiraled out of control.
Holland wanted to leave, and as she drove with a friend past the shadows of the city’s skyline, a man rolled down a passenger window and opened fire. Virginia State Police recovered at least 72 shell casings -- with the young mother and her friend, Tanna Gardner, pronounced dead before dawn on Mother’s Day.
“This murderer is still out there, and he does not need to be breathing the air of my daughter’s two children,” Holland’s mother, Debbie, said in an interview Thursday.
“If you have any kind of conscience at all, come forward. Because it could have been your mother.”
There were times when Debbie said her body was unable to contain the grief it was asked to bear.
But as a pandemic wanes and her daughter’s killer remains at large, Debbie said she, her husband, and friends will return to Richmond on Saturday, canvassing the Shockoe Bottom neighborhood for tips and support.
More importantly, they will show the area they will never forget.
“This is a cold-blooded killer who is out there, and somebody knows something,” Debbie said. “This killer has crippled us…And taken away the innocence of two children, who will never have a beautiful Mother’s Day of peace.”
The FBI has a $50,000 reward for anyone who can provide information leading to an arrest. To anonymously report new information on the 2017 unsolved Mother’s Day murder, click here to call or email Virginia State Police.
