CHARLOTTE — Southside Park is a place where families go to have fun and make happy memories, but for Sakendra Rodgers-Hall, the playground brings painful flashbacks.
“It’s time,” Rodgers-Hall said. “It’s time for her to have justice. She deserves it. Her family deserves it.”
Rodgers-Hall is fighting for justice for her sister, Alkia Rodgers, who was 18 when her body was discovered on the park’s playground.
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Officers say she was stabbed to death on May 22, 2003, and her killer has not been identified.
“Everybody is a suspect, basically,” Rodgers-Hall said. “Don’t trust anybody. It’s hard to get answers from anybody.”
Rodgers-Hall said Rodgers was meeting her baby’s father at the park for diapers but never made it home.
That baby, Marqualo, was just one year old.
The 23-year-old now doesn’t remember his mother, Rodgers-Hall said.
Rodgers-Hall said her nephew doesn’t ask much about his mother.
“He doesn’t really ask,” he said. “But we do tell him stories about her. We keep her name alive.”
Channel 9 was there in 2003 as investigators combed the park for evidence.
There weren’t enough leads, so the case went cold.
It would mean a lot for the family to have closure.
“The end of restless nights and just wondering and being out here with that person. It would put a calm to the storm,” Rodgers-Hall said.
Rodgers’ relatives continue to hold candlelight vigils, praying for answers.
One person who will never get closure Alkia Rodger’s mother.
Joe-Ann Rodgers died in 2015 with no answers as to who killed her daughter.
“She really wanted that,” Rodgers-Hall said. “She really wanted justice for her. We all do. But as her parent, that’s critical for her to have.”
Rodgers-Hall said she will always remember her sister as a comedian who could light up a room.
She hopes every day that investigators find the person responsible for the darkness and pain her family has endured.
“I guess it’ll be a start of us really actually healing and getting closure,” she said.
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