By Kathy Wray Colemnan, associate publisher, editor-in-chief
CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-Janece Jackson, the stepdaughter of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and the mother of the mayor's 24-year-old slain grandson, Frank Q. Jackson, has died.
Police said Janece Jackson was found unresponsive on Friday and that the cause of her death has not been made public. Other sources say the cause of her death is unknown. She is the only daughter of Jackson's longtime wife, Edwina Jackson.
Mayor Jackson is a Democrat and the city's four-term Black mayor who is retiring at the end of the year after opting not to seek an unprecedented fifth term. Voters will determine his successor via a Nov 2 general election when City Council President Kevin Kelley faces nonprofit executive Justin Bibb for a nonpartisan runoff. The 17 city council seats are also up for grabs as are open judicial seats in Cleveland and some suburban offices.
The death of the mayor's daughter comes roughly two months after the Sept 19 shooting death of his grandson, Frank Q. Jackson, the younger Jackson's murder now among a plethora of unsolved murders of Black people in the largely Black major American city of some 372,000 people.
Frank Q Jackson was shot multiple times inside a home in the Kinsman neighborhood on the city's largely Black east side.
Police were called to the shooting near Sidaway and East 70th St. in the Garden Valley projects at around 9 p.m and have not released any details about a possible suspect.
A $5,000 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest in the case, police said.
Mayor Jackson, who was escorted by police into and out of the home where the shooting incident occurred, was on the scene for much of the night as were Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams and Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin.
The mayor's grandson was in the news multiple times in the months leading up to his murder.
His death came three days after arson charges were filed against a man who is accused of setting fire to a car seen speeding away after the 2019 fatal shooting of Antonio Parra. Cleveland police officers went the mayor’s house the night of that shooting in search of Frank Q. Jackson after learning that the car at issue was registered to the mayor's grandson.
Frank Q. Jackson said in response that he was not driving the car when the arson and fatal shooting occurred and that he had loaned out his car. No murder charges have been filed in that case, which remains under investigation as does the case regarding the murder of the mayor's grandson.
Also, the grandson, whom the mayor helped to raise, was charged with domestic violence following an argument with his girlfriend back in 2020 and in July he was charged with felonious assault on a police officer and failure to comply with a police officer's order, a first and fourth degree felony respectively.
And he was already on probation relative to a plea deal before Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell that came following a 2019 indictment on felonious assault, abduction charges and two counts of failure to comply with police in which he was accused of punching and choking a young 18-year-old Black woman, and striking her with a metal truck hitch.
In that case he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor assault in exchange for dismissal of the felonious assault and other charges.
In turn, Judge O'Donnell handed him a suspended 90 day sentence and put him on probation for 18 months.
In spite of his run ins with the law, the mayor's grandson was loved, the mayor once telling reporters in response to the controversy surrounding his grandson that he loves his family just like others do.
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