By Kate Stockrahm
“She didn’t deserve this,” Tyraye Knox told the gathered reporters outside his former home, completely riddled with bullet holes, on Altoona Street on May 15, 2026. “At all,” added Alexis Smith, mother of Tyhari Knox, the 9-year-old girl killed in a drive-by shooting in Flint’s Mott Park neighborhood last week.
Both parents held each other as they went on to describe their daughter – a Brownell Stem Academy fourth-grader who had won two races at her last track meet and loved TikTok, singing, and dancing. “She was my world, man,” Knox said through tears.
He asked that everyone stop speculating about their family on social media and for whoever shot hundreds of rounds into their home on May 8 to turn themselves in to authorities.
“230 bullets in my home where my kids lay their heads,” Smith said, crying too. “I worked hard to provide for mine. You just tore my family apart.”
Despite their personal grief, Tyhari’s parents’ message on Friday was one of concern for the greater community during the press conference, which was called by Sixth Ward Flint City Councilwoman Tonya Burns.
“All of this – this violence, this gun violence, this shooting, this back and forth – it has to stop now,” Smith said as she asked Flint parents to check on their children.
“It’s a young crowd, the young kids doing all this, you know, stupidity,” Knox added before Smith continued: “We have to come together. My daughter is gone, and there’s so many other people out here who have lost their kids,” she said. “Because of the same thing,” Knox finished.
For her part, Burns reiterated that Tyhari’s family was calling on the Flint community to share any information they have on possible perpetrators with police.
“Come forward,” Burns said. “It’s time to stop the silence, to end the violence. It’s time to end it. Let this be our last one. This shouldn’t have happened.”
Burns said she was calling for a “comprehensive safety plan” that will “deal with intervention, prevention, [and] education.” She said that plan must get to “the root of the problem,” which she believes to be that many of the young people committing these atrocities are themselves dealing with the impacts of brain development and anger issues from lead poisoning during the Flint Water Crisis.
Before the cameras turned off, Tyhari’s parents confirmed that there were seven people home on the night of the shooting (which happened around 2 a.m. on May 8) – all of whom, aside from Mr. Knox, were asleep at the time shots started. They shared that Tyhari’s 12-year-old sister, who had also been shot and taken to the hospital, was now doing “okay.”
“There was no one here but us and the kids,” Smith said, shaking her head. “It was a house full of kids.”
Funeral services for Tyhari Knox will be held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, May 20 at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church. She will be laid to rest at Sunset Hills Cemetery. Her family has launched a GoFundMe to support those arrangements as well as counseling and healing services beyond.
