TAMPA, Fla. — The family of a 14-year-old, who was shot and killed, held a vigil in the Tampa neighborhood where her body was discovered.
Friends and family of Nilexia Alexander gathered to release balloons on Wednesday evening. They said "Lexi" had a bright smile and welcoming personality.
"She's not here now to complete what God put her on earth to do," Alexander's former teacher Kaneshia Williams-Hall said. "Someone took that from her, someone took her from her mother, from her sister, from her uncle, from her grandmother."
Tampa Police Department said Alexander was found with multiple gunshot wounds in the 100 block of West Floribraska Avenue early Friday morning.
Friends are begging the community to come forward with answers.
"It is very known that the parents want their children to bury them and we’re just in the day now where parents are burying their children," Triumph & Deliverance Cathedral Pastor Elvis Piggott said.
Police said the teen was listed as a runaway prior to her death. She was known to spend in the Jackson Heights area when she left her home in Temple Terrace.
"You’re not a snitch, you are a helper, help one another," Williams-Hall said. "We’re all in this together. It takes a village so if someone knows what happened to Lexi if you hear something, come forward,."
Anyone with information about the shooting, or anyone who saw Alexander in the past week, is asked to call Tampa PD detectives at the non-emergency line at 813-231-6130.
