Jawanda Johnson

Jawanda F. Johnson was a 26-year-old woman of Richmond, Virginia, known most importantly as a mother. Public accounts from the time identify her as the parent of three children and, at the time of her passing, five-and-a-half months pregnant with a son. She lived in the Fairfield/ South Richmond area and was part of the community near Chalfont Drive and East Belt Boulevard.

Though detailed records of Jawanda’s everyday life, work, and hobbies are not available in the public notices located during this research, what is repeatedly clear is the central role her children and family played in her life. Local reporting from June 2017 described relatives and neighbors reacting to a sudden loss, and noted that her family remembered her as a mother expecting to welcome another child.

Jawanda’s death on June 22, 2017, left a grieving family and community. The facts reported at the time focus on the immediate circumstances surrounding her passing; out of respect for her memory, it is important to keep the emphasis on the person she was: a young woman whose greatest role, in the public record, was as a mother preparing to expand her family. Her life mattered to those who knew and loved her, and the loss of her presence and of the child she carried was deeply felt by family and neighbors.

This short remembrance honors Jawanda by centering what is known and verified: she was a young Richmond mother whose family and community mourned her, and who had hopes and plans for the future that will forever remain part of her legacy. Where the public record is limited, that absence is acknowledged rather than filled with conjecture — Jawanda was a real person whose life had value beyond the circumstances of her death.