In some ways, Monica Joy Holley was a typical 14-year-old: The eighth-grader went to St. Paul’s Highland Park Middle School. She played volleyball and ran track. She was playful and fun and enjoyed making TikTok videos of dancing with her friends.

In other ways, Monica had never been ordinary: She was an explorer from an early age, setting out to find her own path, not afraid to speak her mind and stand up for what was right.

Monica Joy Holley (Courtesy of the family)

She hadn’t decided what she wanted to do when she finished school, but Monica’s family is sure she would have made her mark on the world.

But just over a year ago, not far from Monica’s home on St. Paul’s Greater East Side, a torrent of gunshots rang out. Many people were outside, enjoying the warm fall night. Monica Joy Holley was fatally shot, and three other teenagers were hurt in the shooting.

Monica “was a child and this is a big loss, it’s a tragedy,” said one of her aunts, Shelby Joy Adams.

As Monica’s homicide has gone unsolved, one of the few from last year in St. Paul without answers, her family has struggled to understand why her life was taken. They don’t believe she or the other people injured were targeted: “They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time,” her mother said.

Now, her family is finding a way to celebrate and remember Monica. They’ve organized a book drive through Red Balloon Bookstore in St. Paul, and the books purchased will go to schools that Monica attended and other organizations in St. Paul that the family has connections with. It goes through Nov. 10.

Sheryl Anderson, Monica’s grand-godmother, said she thought the book drive would be fitting when she considered the quote, “One of the deepest longings of the human soul is to be seen,” by poet John O’Donohue.

“Like most young adolescents, Monica wanted to be seen,” Anderson said recently. “… She was taken too soon from us in a horrible way, and I want her to continue to be seen.”

‘Somebody out there … knows’

It was Oct. 4, 2023, at 7:45 p.m. when the shooting happened outside an apartment building at Hazelwood Street near Maryland Avenue. Police personnel collected 36 spent casings with two different calibers, indicating two guns were used, according to a search warrant affidavit.

In addition to Monica being shot, 13- and 15-year-old girls and a 19-year-old woman were shot and wounded.

Surveillance videos from the area showed the path of a black Dodge Charger that’s suspected of being involved, the affidavit said. Information about that vehicle and who was inside is a major piece of information that homicide investigators are looking for. St. Paul Police Sgt. Jen O’Donnell said they estimate the Charger was at least 10 years old.

“Absolutely, there’s somebody out there that knows” what happened, said Brittany Joy Tolbert, one of Monica’s aunts. “For a whole year, somebody and maybe multiple people have been holding on to this information. I don’t know if it weighs on them or not, but how long can a person hold on to that? I worry that there is somebody out there who was capable of doing this and still has a firearm and could still be out there causing destruction.”

There were numerous people in the apartment building parking lot at the time of the shooting, according to Sgt. Jeff Thissen, but he and O’Donnell said not many people provided information to police.

“It’s difficult to determine, if it was a targeted shooting, who the intended target was,” O’Donnell said.

Figuring out a motivation could help solve the case. “Was there a problem in the neighborhood that precipitated this?” O’Donnell said. “What we really need is what people saw, what they heard, what they’ve heard since.”

Monica’s mother thinks it would be “easier to connect the dots if it was somebody who (Monica Joy) knew or if she had something to do with the situation.”

“I would like to know who did it and to have justice served,” said her mother, whose name is also Monica Joy Holley.

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Surveillance video showed the Dodge Charger at 7:42 p.m. going north on Phalen Boulevard to Maryland Avenue. It turned north onto Hazelwood Street and into the first parking lot of the apartment complex, before exiting south onto Hazelwood. The vehicle paused and a muzzle flash could be seen.

The Charger was seen again on Maryland Avenue, heading west, to Prosperity Avenue and then Birmingham Street.

“Someone saw something,” O’Donnell said. “It was 7:45 at night. It wasn’t 3 or 4 in the morning, when most people are sleeping.”

Police are asking anyone with information to call the homicide unit at 651-266-5650.

Waiting for peaceful resting spot for daughter

Monica’s family hasn’t been able to lay her to rest because they want to cremate her. Her father died about a year before her, and her mother plans to place their urns next to each other on the mantle in her home.

When a homicide is unsolved, a family can bury a victim, but Ramsey County officials don’t allow cremation when an investigation is ongoing. That’s because, if charges are later filed, defense attorneys might request exhumation and another autopsy.

Monica Joy Holley with a photo of her daughter, also named Monica Joy Holley, near her home in St. Paul. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Monica Holley regularly goes to the parking lot where her 14-year-old daughter lost her life. “I sit there and it’s an unsettling feeling and it also makes me feel closer to what happened,” she said.

Both mother and daughter were born and raised in St. Paul. The younger Monica — who her family called “Little Monica” — lived with her family in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood and later the Greater East Side. She went to Adams Spanish Immersion Elementary School in St. Paul, which had also been her mom’s and siblings’ school.

The girls and women in two generations of their family — nine of them — share the middle name “Joy,” said Shelby Joy Adams, Monica’s aunt.

“Even as kids, we were excited that we had this linking factor between us,” she said. “It’s quickly become family lore.”

‘Powerful young lady’

Gwen Troy, one of Little Monica’s grandmothers, remembers her as an “explorer and the smartest kid that I knew.”

When Monica Joy was 3, she bundled up herself and her little brother, 18 months her junior, in winter clothes because she wanted to walk to their godmother’s house. Their uncle was baby-sitting them while their mother was working, and they were supposed to be napping.

“She wouldn’t get lost, we just wouldn’t know where she was,” Troy said. On that winter day, an adult saw them and stopped their journey before they got far.

Troy said her granddaughter could have been an actress or an acting coach: “That little girl loved playing different characters, but she also liked an ensemble because she needed someone to direct and she gave them scripts that she would write.”

She was “a powerful young lady,” said Anderson, her godmother. Like most teens, she’d go from being sassy “to making us all laugh.”

“She was a 14-year-old girl just finding her independence as a teenager,” Troy said.

Monica Joy book drive

When Anderson heard that Marley Dias was the keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Breakfast in the Twin Cities in January, she was inspired. As a sixth-grader, Dias started the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign because she wanted to read books in which Black girls are the main character. Dias is now a student at Harvard University.

Anderson was struck by Dias’ work when she was just a bit younger than Monica Joy and she asked Little Monica’s 22-year-old sister, Romaney Joy MuGoodwin, what she thought. They and Adams, who works in nonprofit development, set the local book drive into motion.

Anderson was drawn to Red Balloon Bookstore on St. Paul’s Grand Avenue because it’s a small business and sells children’s books. She approached the owner, Holly Weinkauf.

“Of course I said, ‘yes,’ — we would be happy to help,” Weinkauf said. “I was incredibly moved by their desire to mark this tragic and heartbreaking event by honoring the generous and joyful spirit of Monica through sharing books.”

Red Balloon Bookshop hasn’t done a book drive exactly like this one, but they’ve partnered “with other organizations doing great work with kids and books in our community,” Weinkauf said.

The books will be donated to Wilder Child Development Center, where Little Monica and most of her siblings attended, Adams Elementary and Highland Park Middle School. Books will also go to Interfaith Action of Greater St. Paul and Keystone Community Services.

“Reading is something Monica Joy really loved and these books will be supporting youth in the same community that she grew up in,” Adams said.

Holley said she thinks they’ll plan something annually to keep her daughter’s “memory alive in a positive way of giving back” because that was important to her daughter.

There are reminders of Monica Joy in other family members, in their mannerisms or sayings, but the 14-year-old “can’t be replaced,” Troy said. “She’s an original masterpiece and we lost someone priceless.”

Monica Joy Holley Book Drive

The Monica Joy Holley Book Drive goes through Nov. 10.

Red Balloon Bookshop, which created book lists of recommended titles, will provide an additional donation of 20% of book drive purchases for more books.

People can visit the bookshop at 891 Grand Ave. in St. Paul or find more information and take part online at redballoonbookshop.com/monica-joy-holley-book-drive-october-1-2024-november-10-2024.

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