After nearly four years of searching for Jaylen Griffin in upstate New York, his family was given 90 minutes to prepare for a press conference last month, ten days before what would have been his 16th birthday, to announce that his body was found in an attic 5 miles away from his Buffalo home, reports Capital B. His dental records were used to identify him. Police said he had been deceased for a “considerable amount of time.” The Erie County District Attorney’s Office is assisting in the homicide investigation. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia described the news at the April 15 press conference as the “next level of closure” for Jaylen’s family. The 12-year-old’s family has experienced an overwhelming amount of heartache since they last saw him Aug. 4, 2020. Three months after Jaylen went missing, his brother, 18, was murdered near the family home. That same year, Jaylen’s oldest brother survived being shot on his 21st birthday. Jaylen’s mother, Joann Ponzo, passed away in September from what was described as a "broken heart."
Kareema Morris, founder of the organization Bury the Violence, attended the press conference on behalf of the Griffin family — a role she often takes on to spare vulnerable relatives from more heartache and feeling forced to answer intrusive questions. A year after Jaylen’s family reported him missing to the Buffalo Police Department, they reached out to Morris for help. They said the police labeled Jaylen as a runaway— a term often given to missing children of color that reduces the urgency of their case, minimizes law enforcement resources, and diminishes any chance for media attention. That term was all too familiar to Morris. Hearing that another missing Black child was labeled as a “runaway” was a cornerstone to what inspired Morris to launch Bury the Violence after the 2013 murder of her niece, Lasha Rollerson. The 13-year-old girl went missing, and the Buffalo police labeled her as a runaway, too. Her body was found three days later. Capital B has asked the Buffalo Police Department for comment about their missing person policy and usage of the term “runaway.” Jaylen Griffin was found in a house with a history of reported dead bodies. In that part of South Buffalo, Morris said, is a community where people speak to one another and “are neighbors first.” She strongly believes that someone knows something because Jaylen “didn’t just pop up there,”