Family, friends honor slain 17-year-old Jada Sellers: "We'll go through it together"

Dozens of people packed New Antioch Baptist Church in Windsor Mill on Saturday to celebrate the life of Jada Sellers, a 17-year-old who died earlier this month, nearly two weeks after she was shot.

The Milford Mill Academy honor student was shot in Baltimore on July 31. She died 12 days later after doctors at Shock Trauma fought to save her life.

Loved ones described Sellers as a beautiful soul. They said she was a leader and had a big heart.

"I promise you, we will make it through together," Heber Brown III, Selles' cousin, said at Saturday's service.

Family and friends shared hugs and tears.

"I don't want you to be surprised if some laughter also breaks out in the room," Brown III said, recalling the times Sellers made them smile. 

Now, loved ones look to the impact Sellers had on her family, friends and community. They're holding each other closely, reminded that Sellers will always be with them.

"Many of you, you visited us at the hospital," Brown III said. "You were there with us. You know we were praying at the hospital together. We were reading scripture together. We played games together. We did it together...But the blessing of it is, just like at the hospital, we'll go through it together."

Remembering Jada

WJZ spoke with Sellers' parents days before her funeral.

"She would come home and say, 'The queen is home.' I would say, 'I'm the queen. You're the princess,'" her mother, Latarsha Sellers, said.

"We always joked she was the smallest, but she was always the leader," her father, Eric Sellers, said. "She was always in charge."

Family members said the Milford Mill Academy student served on student government and was a member of the National Honor Society. The 17-year-old also loved to dance and cheer.

Authorities said the sole suspect in the killing, Sellers' ex-boyfriend Christian Hursey, took his own life as police served a search warrant on his family's home in Baltimore County.