Family, friends, and members of the African community are marking ten years since the death of Jamal Oladapo, a final-year student at the Los Angeles Film School who was fatally stabbed in July 2016.
Oladapo’s mother, Karimot Jolaoso, the owner of Sola’s African Market in Los Angeles, has spent the past decade honouring her only child’s memory while continuing to run the business she built with him in mind.
Jolaoso, who grew up in Nigeria and lived with polio as a child, moved to the United States as an international student and studied accounting before training as a nurse. She later left nursing to spend more time with her son, purchasing a small African grocery store and renaming it Sola’s African Market after her middle name. The shop has since become known for stocking staples such as garri, fufu flour, palm Oil and cassava leaves, and for drawing a diverse customer base of Africans, Caribbeans, Latinos, Asians and Americans.
Oladapo was studying towards a career in the entertainment industry when he was killed in July 2016. His mother has described his death as a loss that reshaped the rest of her life.
In the years since, associates say Jolaoso has kept the market running as a way of preserving her son’s memory, describing it as a place where his legacy continues through her daily interactions with customers. She now uses a walker following unrelated physical injuries, but continues to serve the community personally.
To mark the tenth anniversary, Jolaoso is inviting family, friends, neighbours and members of the wider community to join her in remembering her son, and has asked that those who knew him share memories, words of comfort and acts of kindness in his honour.
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