Josselin Corea Escalante was 9 years old when she and her mother and younger brother abandoned Guatemala to seek asylum in the United States, believing that she would provide security.
They ended up in Tennessee, where Josselin – whose family calls Dallana, her middle name – celebrated in 1523 with a spring quinceañera in a Nashville Dance Room.
But last week, another student shot and killed Josselin, 16, in the high school cafeteria. Now her family, who is still waiting for another asylum decision, disputes if she is worth staying. The main reason why they made the painful trip to the United States – on foot, almost two months – was the fear that Josselin and her brother would be abducted or killed by gangs in Guatemala.
“We had a dream for a better life,” said her father, the German Corea, in Spanish. “But the reality is that it’s no better nowhere. In Guatemala, you’ve never heard of someone who kills someone at school.”
He and his wife have already made a decision to send Josselin’s body back to Guatemala for burial, a way to guarantee that they will reunite if they decide – or are forced – to leave the United States. Mr Corea came to the country before his wife and children and is not part of the asylum case, so he is at greater risk of being deported.
“This is the country that took it away from me,” Mr Corea said. “And if one day we return to our country, they’ll be there with us.”
Josselin was flourishing in Nashville, where he loved to sing and play football. He had once rejected a three -day trip to make sure he didn’t lose school. She wanted to become a doctor, her uncle, Carlos Corea, said: “A doctor saves lives and that was not fair for her.”
On January 22, a student who said police said he had adopted the hatred of online rhetoric brought a pistol to the Antioch Gymnasium in southern Nashville. He opened fire, killing Josselin and injuring another student before shooting himself. Police did not say if the shooter is targeting Josselin.
One month by 2025, there were at least 15 shootings in or near a school campus, according to the Shooting School K-12 database.
The loss of Josselin, who was often translated to her family, led some of them to speak.
“I’m not afraid – I tell the truth, I tell people how I feel,” Carlos Corea said in Spanish.
That is why he and another of Josselin’s uncles, Juan Corea, found themselves in the footsteps of Tennessee’s state capital on Monday, surrounded by a multitude of democratic legislators, students and weapon control activists. As they left the nearby church, where they held a funeral for Josselin, they saw people gather with images of their niece and understand what was happening.
“We never thought we would be in this position, but we wanted to give people our message,” Carlos Corea said later. The two men brought images of Josselin to Quinceañera Tiara and a shiny red dress.
There were protests about the control of arms in Nashville before, mainly in 2023 after three thirds of graders and three staff members were killed in a private Christian school. But with legislators arriving to discuss the creation of a state -owned immigration tsar, the crowd in this protest repeatedly links the threat of imposing immigration with their fears of firefighting violence.
Through a translator, Carlos Corea spoke to the crowd on behalf of his family. As they shouted, he put a punch in the air.
In the silence of the house where they gathered for weekly meals, Josselin’s relatives were unable to rest. Juan’s uncle thought of the dance they shared during her birthday, where she told Josselin that she loved her. Her father thinks of activism in her name.
“We have support, but what I say to all the parents who have taken their children in schools: Don’t let it remain,” the German Corea said. “Keep doing everything you can to have justice for our children. If we stay with our hands tied, this will continue to happen again. ”
While the Antioch Gymnasium has reopened, with an additional school resource employee and new metal detectors, Josselin’s cousins who attended school with her are very afraid to return. They will soon enroll in a new school, family members said.
On Thursday, Josselin’s pink coffin was loaded on a plane for her trip to Guatemala. There, her grandparents and her aunt waited for her.
