The family of Rayven Amuan Edwards wants the world to know about the quiet strength and fierce love of a woman taken far too soon. Her mother, Lucy Edwards, described her daughter as everything, especially to her: a best friend, a constant source of dependability, and a gentle soul who never raised her voice or spoke ill of anyone.
Rayven, a 34-year-old mother of three, was a gentle and loving woman with a soft voice and a heart big enough to overcome any obstacle for the sake of her children, aged between 3 and 10 years old.
On Wednesday, February 11, 2026, at approximately 4:39 p.m., that gentle life was violently extinguished. Officers from the Metropolitan Police Department responded to a report of a shooting in front of an apartment complex in the 4100 block of W Street, Northwest, in Washington D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood.
There, they found Rayven suffering from gunshot wounds. Her 10-year-old daughter had also been shot in the arm. Despite immediate life-saving efforts, Rayven was pronounced dead at the scene, while her daughter was transported to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The shooter was quickly identified as 35-year-old Stephon Marquis Jeter, Rayven’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her 3-year-old son. He had fled the scene in a black pickup truck with the young boy, prompting an urgent AMBER Alert. Rayven’s family later revealed that Jeter had a history of domestic violence, including making threats and taking her apartment keys. Her mother shared the heartbreaking detail that Rayven’s 10-year-old daughter, who was recently diagnosed with autism, had always been the one to bravely stand up for her mother.
Around 6:30 p.m., Prince George’s County Police located Jeter’s vehicle in Maryland and initiated a pursuit, which ended when he crashed at 30th Street and Nash Place, Southeast, Washington D.C. Inside the crashed vehicle, officers found Jeter dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The 3-year-old boy was not in the car but was soon located unharmed at a family member’s home in Prince George’s County, Maryland, bringing the immediate crisis to an end.
Rayven Edwards is remembered not only for her gentle nature but for her incredible resilience. She lived with lupus and chronic kidney disease, enduring regular dialysis treatments that would have broken most people, yet she never stopped fighting for her children, one of whom had esophageal damage from infancy. Her aunt, Cathy Lawton, asked the world to remember Rayven’s “quiet strength, her resilience” and her “maternal energy,” describing how she took immense care to protect her three wonderful children.