Shooting victim lives on through organ donation

SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) - One Shreveport mother says she will not give up the fight of making sure her son’s killers are behind bars.

Jared Pelletier was shot while sitting in a vehicle on Prospect Street. His mother remembers the call she received that day, but it’s what she discovered when she opened his wallet that gave the gift of life to others fighting for their lives.

“To be killed over a bag of weed and shot in the back of the head, how cowardly,” said Roberta Stark, Pelletier’s mother.

Stark can’t stop thinking about her son, and the fate he met on April 30.

“I didn’t expect my son to ever be murdered,” Stark said.

The Shreveport Police Department responded to the 200 block of Prospect Street after reports of a shooting. Stark says her son was shot while sitting inside of a vehicle. Doctors told her he was brain dead.

“I needed to let him go. I went up there and I assured him I would seek justice,” she said.

But it was what Stark found in her son’s wallet that offered some peace: he was an organ donor.

“What lessens the grief is knowing that he lives on in three other people and hopefully I will get to meet those people,” said Stark.

Pelletier was able to donate his pancreas, heart, liver, and both kidneys.

“I just try to imagine the joy, the elation when those families got that call being that his blood was the second rarest out of eight blood types,” Stark said.

And even though he is gone, Stark says her granddaughter will always have her daddy’s heart.

“He had a kind heart, he had a good heart,” Stark said.

Police are still looking for 22-year-old Elijah Williams. Williams’ warrant is for principal to attempted first-degree murder. Police have also obtained a warrant for 20-year-old Thomas Office for first-degree murder.

Copyright 2022 KSLA. All rights reserved.