Death in the Dorms

Jenna, she really wanted

to get into film.

Her trajectory was probably

going to do great things.

She just wanted to give people a voice.

- She was able to go right over to Temple,

and she was excited about that.

- Temple University is, in my opinion, a safe place.

The surrounding neighborhoods, you have a different story.

- Temple University Police need your help

to track down a missing student.

I remember having a conversation with my friends

like, "Whoa, we just got here.

This is happening already?"

- The entire purpose of going inside of this apartment

was to find out what happened.

- I just wanted to know, you know, how a human being

could do that to somebody.

This is Jenna's room.

She had recently redone her room

because she knew she'd be living here

through her time at Temple.

Yeah.

Um, I definitely do sleep in here.

I find it comforting to just spend time here with Jenna.

I just love remembering her laughter,

um, when she'd be watching something funny.

She had a great laugh.

We met at Villanova University.

My mother said, "You should go to Villanova,

and you'll meet somebody with money."

But I met Ed.

And before our first anniversary,

we had our first child.

- We had Janelle, and then two years later,

we were blessed with Jenna.

When Jenna was young,

she said she was gonna be famous.

"I'm gonna do something in this world."

Jenna and I met

on the very first day of kindergarten.

I had an accident, and I got to go to the nurse

and get new clothes.

Jenna didn't like the outfit she was wearing that day,

so she also had an accident so she could change her outfit.

Jenna's personality was very large.

Immediately, when she entered a room,

you could tell, you know, that she was going to be

a very large light in that room.

Above anything else, she really loved

her friends and her family.

She always let you know how much she loved you,

whenever she was around you, which, to me,

was always something that was really wonderful.

Jenna's fashion was very sparkly, very loud,

in a, you know, outfit type of a way.

A lot of bright colors, a lot of sparkles, a lot of glitter.

- She used to joke that my parents never knew who she was,

because her hair was always a different color.

- She just was someone that was, like, so, like, open

and free and unapologetically herself.

Jenna was in Red Alert, um,

which was their production studio at high school.

And she just totally embraced it.

- Each kid took a turn being the host,

or they would create documentary segments

or fun little skits.

I always knew it was gonna be a good episode

when something of Jenna's was gonna be on it.

She really wanted to get into film.

She's very creative.

I think she would have been very, very good at it.

- This is what she wanted to do,

and this is where her passion was.

- Her trajectory was probably going to do great things.

She just wanted to give people a voice.

Anything she touched was something beautiful

and something really thoughtful.

She was passionate.

She was ready to pursue film.

She was really excited to finally

get started on her career path.

When Jenna was a senior in high school,

we looked at many colleges,

and she ended up choosing University of Tampa for film.

We had gone.

She was excited.

She loved the school.

She had met so many new people.

And she was doing really well.

In her freshman year of college,

she was home for the holidays,

around Christmas,

and she slid on an ice patch and shattered her ankle.

It was a really bad injury,

with--she had a plate in her ankle

and screws.

- There was, like, a 0.1% chance that

she could get an infection from the surgery,

and then, of course, she got that infection.

She was on IVs for a number of weeks,

and we thought it was best if she came home, um,

you know, to-- so we could take care of her.

As mature as she is at 19,

to be able to care for an infection,

it would have just been too much.

Especially when she had the IV,

'cause she couldn't go anywhere.

She couldn't do anything.

That was gonna be for months.

Once Jenna healed, I guess we realized

or she realized that she wasn't going back to Tampa.

She did get into, like, a dark place.

The year after the accident, she came to me

the day after Christmas and said, "Mom, I need help."

She said, "I--I'm not good mentally,

and I need you to-- I need to go someplace."

And I was so proud of her for doing that,

'cause so many-- so many kids wouldn't do that.

And we found some place for her to go temporarily,

and she got some help.

It was not something we hid.

Her friends came and visited her

when they could.

And she came out on the other side

a much more secure person.

And that's when, you know, we said,

"You started school.

"You really--these are things you want to do.

"Don't change things

just because things changed for you."

- She enrolled in our local community college.

They actually do have a very good media program,

television studio-- that type of thing.

Once she got there, she really enjoyed it,

and she flourished in community college.

Most of her friends went to school in the area.

They all lived at school, but they stayed in the area.

It really was a small blessing in disguise

for both of us, because she did come home,

and I did get to have her around

for so much of my college career.

- I think that's really when she became enlightened,

if you will, and said, "I need to do something."

- And she put a notice on Facebook

that she wanted to do something

for the less fortunate.

And she asked her friends to gather some clothes,

toiletries, food that could be placed in a backpack.

And she called them "blessing bags."

She was able to receive enough donations

to fill about 30 backpacks.

She would go on her own

to Philadelphia

and hand it out to the homeless.

Her first post about it was like,

"Just want to give out a blessing."

- And that's what she really wanted to make sure,

is that everybody felt that, you know--

that they were also loved.

She had graduated

from Montgomery County Community College

and was transferring.

She was able to go right over to Temple,

and she was excited about that.

Temple is really just, like,

a couple blocks of college campus,

and then it is North Philadelphia.

It was kind of like literally the city was your campus.

You could do anything.

It makes it a really cool space

for, you know, the arts and social justice.

Temple is also really well-known

for its communications and journalism school.

Students who go to Temple have to be really independent.

They have to be very on top of their things.

They know that there's opportunities in the city

that they can go and look for.

Most of the things we did outside of class

were off-campus.

Jenna was really, really excited to start.

I remember post--her posting that she was so excited

to start her first semester at Temple.

- It was a good choice at the time.

- Jenna decided to commute from here, from Harleysville,

to start, and it's about a--

probably an hour drive in traffic.

But it was not unusual for her to stay with friends

that lived near the campus.

I remember very clearly

the first week of school.

Ed had gone with Jenna.

They were gonna have dinner.

I met her down at Temple University.

We did have a chance to go out to dinner, talk.