Mourners honor Gulfport teenager killed in Bourbon Street attack. ‘We must hold each other up’
They came in falling rain Friday morning to the Lyman Community Center, some weeping, others silent, all to honor the teenager who lay in a pink and purple casket.
In a service filled with pain and mourning, but also a celebration of her life, loved ones held each other through song and prayer and tried to remember Ni’Kyra Cheyenne Dedeaux for the joy she gave them.
“It’s OK to cry,” the Rev. Eric Funches said as he stood between two collections of pink and white balloons. “It wasn’t an accident. It was on purpose. That brings upon a kind of pain that is different.”
Friday was one of 14 wrenching memorial services planned around the country for victims killed in a New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street.
Whole families filled the room in Gulfport. Grown men and children wept together, their heads bowed in sorrow and respect for the teenager and her grieving loved ones before them.
Dedeaux died in the early hours of the new year, when a man using a pickup truck as a weapon surged through three crowded blocks of Bourbon Street before he was shot dead by police. The violence, the FBI has said, was a premeditated act of terror.
Melissa and Nicholas Dedeaux, her parents, did not know she was there. Their daughter had snuck out to New Orleans with a friend and her cousin that night to celebrate. In some of her last moments, one friend recalled, she was laughing, surrounded by people she loved.
But the bitter pain of her loss is made worse, people here said, because of how young she was and the fact that no family should have to bury a child.
Just months ago, Dedeaux graduated from Harrison Central High School, where she was an honor roll student. She had lived on the Mississippi Coast all her life, and was an outgoing spirit who left people with a smile. Friends have said she wanted to become a nurse, and was about to go to college.
Those who spoke stood bravely before the crowd of about 200 people, paying tribute even as they struggled for words.
One of Dedeaux’s siblings, Kearston, walked to the podium dressed in black and pink to read her sister a letter.
“I love you,” Kearston Dedeaux said. “If I told you how much you mean to me I would never get a chance to finish.”
Before the service began, Gulfport Mayor Billy Hewes walked to the casket and bowed his head. He made the sign of a cross. Later, speaking to the crowd, he said the city is mourning one of its own. He even elicited a few laughs in the sorrow when he mentioned Dedeaux’s nickname, Biscuit, which her family called her.
“My heart is broken,” Hewes said. “Our entire community’s heart is broken.”
Funches, in his eulogy, spoke in shock at the senseless violence that killed her. It was almost unbelievable, he said. Still, through grief, he asked that people remember the values Dedeaux carried with her.
“She was determined to make you laugh,” he said. “She was determined to bring joy to you.”
The family, seated on one side of the room, sat with their arms around her mother. Some friends wore pink shirts with her photo printed on them that read “Long Live Nie.”
“It could have been any of us,” family friend Tanya Parker said, pausing for a hug. “When life is taken this young, it’s never easy.”
The morning was one step in a long road of grief that began earlier this week when the Dedeauxs and other families were consoled in New Orleans by President Joe Biden.
In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves had ordered flags to fly and half-staff on Thursday, for her.
Through prayers and songs, the people who loved Dedeaux struggled to understand the horrible unfairness of her death. Funches reminded the crowd that their faith and kindness had helped amid the tragedy even as he conceded that there was almost no answer for something like this.
“We will stand together,” he said. “We must hold each other up.”
This story was originally published January 10, 2025 at 2:12 PM.