CHARLOTTE — April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month.
Channel 9′s Elsa Gillis spoke with a local family who’s sharing their loved one’s story to keep her memory alive and help prevent others from experiencing their same pain.
Kilah Davenport didn’t get many years on this earth.
“Kilah was our first granddaughter. She was born in 2009. She just had just an infectious personality that you just fell in love with,” said Brian Davenport, Kilah’s grandfather and retired Charlotte Fire Department Captain.
Just shy of Kilah’s fifth birthday, she passed away.
“I was working when I received a call from my wife Leslie that something bad had happened to Kilah,” Brian said.
In that moment, everything changed for Brian and his family.
“Her former stepfather had taken her and slammed her head into a sheetrock wall, which caused 90 percent brain damage,” Brian said.
For 22 months, Kilah bravely fought on, before succumbing to her injuries. The pain for her family – beyond words.
“We just we don’t want her, what happened to her and her death to be something that’s in vain. We want her life to matter. Her life did matter,” Brian said.
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In 2013, Kilah’s Law was signed by then-North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, increasing sentencing guidelines for severe child abuse.
Each year, her family plants trees in her memory. They celebrate her birthday, and they continue to share her story to prevent what happened to Kilah from happening to another child.
“We felt like we owed her that, we owed her to make a difference in this world for her,” Brian said.
Kilah would have been 16 years old on April 3.
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama signed the Kilah Davenport Child Protection Act, which required all states to review penalties for child abuse.
The family continues their advocacy through the Kilah Davenport Foundation.
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