He was a role model in the football community and the son of a woman with a passion for politics. In her first TV interview, Jaz Granderson's mother, Reign Harris, shares memories of her son just days after he was shot and killed in South St. Louis.
"As a little boy, he was very clumsy," Harris said. "When he wasn't playing sports, he was stumbling over everything."
He grew up to become an assistant coach; a role model for kids on and off the football field.
"He wanted to give back to the younger children to hopefully make them go as far as they could go," Harris said.
Leadership? It runs in the family.
"It is in the blood," Harris said.
She was a 911 dispatcher for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for several years. This year, she ran for alderwoman of the fifth ward.
"I plan on staying in the field of trying to get into politics to change what I can change myself," she said.
She has always wanted the violence to stop.
"And I really don't have an answer as to what will make it stop," she said.
But the mission is extremely important to her and the many other families who are grieving. So she's calling on her law enforcement family to catch anyone involved in killing her son.
"I want to see whomever, however many were involved, caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent," she said.
Granderson's visitation will begin at 10 a.m. Monday at Central Baptist Church on Washington Ave. His funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Everyone is asked to wear purple and black.
