A Sacramento man wanted to be better for his kids. Instead, he lost his life to gun violence

“Mom, what you doing? You at bingo?”

It was Sharaine Booker’s son, Jonas Calhoun, who would call her every other day, an agreement they made so she could have peace of mind on his whereabouts.

Just like in nearly every call he made to Booker, he asked to say hello and talk to each person in the house, one-by-one — his sisters, nieces and nephews.

Less than a week later, Booker was out with her friends when she received a call informing her that Calhoun had been shot and killed.

“It was just a hard feeling to (have) someone call you and tell you that your son, your child, is gone,” Booker said.

Jonas Marice Calhoun, 30, died in a North Sacramento shooting on Aug. 5, a victim of gun violence — Sacramento’s leading cause of homicide in 2023. The Sacramento Police Department has not announced any arrests in connection with the shooting, which is under investigation.

“It’s like they’re looking at my son as just another statistic. Black man that got shot, and he’s gone,” Booker said. “And it’s not right. He didn’t deserve that.”

‘I’m gonna get it right’

As a child, Booker said, Calhoun was very quiet and obedient. He did what she asked him to do and helped out around the house without being asked. It took him a long time to “break out of his shell,” though he loved to fish with his stepfather, go to the fair and be outside.

Calhoun and older brother Tyrene were “two peas in a pod,” Booker said, recalling the pair rapping and spending time together. The two were born in the same year, 11 months apart, and attended the same schools.

As Calhoun grew older, he developed a love for dancing. He expressed his personality on social media, creating short videos for Facebook and TikTok. In his comedy, he’d wear wigs to play different characters in humorous skits and regularly film short dancing videos for TikTok .

When he was in high school, she said, Calhoun “never backed down” from a fight when being picked on. This eventually landed him to trouble and juvenile detention.

“He knew that he messed up, and he was like, ‘I’m gonna get it right,’” she said.

Calhoun would graduate high school while at the detention center, but come home at 18. He began to get his life on track, working and starting a family. After he moved in with the mother of his children, he became a stay-at-home father, taking care of his children.

He later separated from the mother of his children, Booker said, because he felt that he was not being a good father in light of the fact that he lacked a father figure in his own. He never stopped caring for his five children and wanted to be back in their lives.

For Calhoun, there was little that could stop him for being there for his children. One year, Calhoun took the light rail to the Arden Del Paso station just to attend his son’s birthday since he didn’t have a car. There was no bus running, so he walked nearly two hours from the station to the location of the gathering on Watt Avenue.

“He wasn’t going to miss that birthday for nothing,” Booker said.

She remembers her son as someone who was always laughing, cracking jokes and making her smile.

“He had so much family, so much family,” Booker said. “He was just a loving, caring person… He just had that little dimple inside his face, his cheek, and that’s all you see.”

‘No, that’s not my son’

Calhoun had been entangled in rough patches throughout his life, but Booker believed that he was always trying to change for the better.

In 2019, he was inspired by a friend to start his own clothing line, which he called “The Mud” and styled with cartoon character designs. Calhoun would sell the t-shirts and hoodies from the back of a car trunk, and later on from a boutique store belonging to a family friend. Booker said at a certain point, the business was gaining momentum and the apparel was “really selling.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, lockdowns forced him to stop.

“When he got shut down, it just took a toll on him and everything,” Booker said. “That was how he thought that he was going to be able to support his kids.”

Booker said Calhoun’s efforts to turn his life around became evident to her more recently when he started making an effort to appear in court, asking her to remind him or to drive him to the courthouse on his appointed date.

He used to not care about such obligations, she said. In July, he spent two weeks in jail for failing to appear in court.

When his attorney called her days after Calhoun’s death to remind her of his next court date, she had to tell him Calhoun was gone.

The efforts to change for the better, Booker said, came largely from her son’s desire to “be there” for his own children. She said Calhoun often talked about how he wanted to see his son graduate and go on to play in the NFL, or to see his daughter attend prom and eventually get married.

“People making my son to be out like he was just this crackhead boy that got shot, and it’s like no, that’s not my son,” Booker said.

‘No one did nothing’

All of Calhoun’s siblings, including Tyrene, are taking his death hard, Booker said. His oldest sister has struggled to eat and sleep, and Booker worries about her youngest 16-year-old son who has shown “no emotions.”

“He would always tell Jay, like, ‘Jay, you gonna be a football player, you gonna be out there. You gonna get it, you gonna get this money, you gonna get this money. You gonna take care of all our family. You gonna be the one that get us out the mud,’” Booker said.

Booker is still working to fundraise enough money to pay for Calhoun’s burial and funeral.

“It’s really hard, and I just feel like I’m letting him down by letting him sit up there because I have nothing that I can do to get him where he needs to be,” Booker said. “I have to ask for people from the public to help. I just wish that I had a little more time to get stuff started so I don’t have to deal with this.”

She has organized a GoFundMe campaign and two dinner fundraisers so far for Jonas’s end-of-life costs, which total around $10,000.

Booker said she was able to see security camera footage of the shooting, which showed Calhoun attempting to run away from the situation. She has not received any updates from the police about the investigation.

“No one deserves to see their child out there on the street laying down,” Booker said. “No one did nothing. They just drove by on the cameras and seen my son laying there on the ground, dying.”

Amid her grief, she is also frustrated with the lack of outreach from authorities about Calhoun’s case.

“I have seen a lot of people, parents, where they have to get out and do stuff on their own because police is supposed to be out there to protect us and help us, and they’re not even trying to help or call,” she said

Above all, Booker remembers how much Calhoun cared about his family, constantly telling each person how much he loved them.

Every year on her birthday, she said, he would call her immediately after midnight.

When she turned 35, Calhoun turned on the song “Make It Last Forever” by Keith Sweat and began singing for her. Booker laughed at how his voice cracked on the high notes.

You got to make it last

Never, never, never let it end

Just make it last forever and ever