A Midland mother is preparing to say goodbye to her 15-year-old daughter, Jazmin Calderon, after being critically injured in a neighborhood fight.
LUBBOCK, Texas — It’s a pain no mother ever prepares for — saying goodbye to her child.
Fifteen-year-old Jazmin Calderon remains on life support in a Lubbock hospital after a neighborhood fight left her critically injured on May 20.
Her mother, Janelle Calderon, shared memories of her daughter, her dreams and the heartbreak of watching her slip away.
“Oh, well, my baby,” Janelle Calderon said, fighting through tears. “She loved doing her makeup. She was my oldest of five girls. She wanted to go into cosmetology as soon as she turned 16. She was trying to find a faster way to start doing all of that.”
Jazmin was just beginning to come into her own, her mom said — a beautiful young girl with big dreams and a kind heart.
“She was very beautiful, very, very beautiful,” Janelle Calderon said. “Sometimes, it wasn’t always too nice for her. But she was a sweetheart. She was a good sister. Like any teenager, she’d lose patience with the toddlers, but she loved her sisters.”
That love became more vocal in the final weeks before the tragedy.
“These last few weeks, it changed,” Janelle Calderon recalled. “She started calling me ‘Mommy.’ ‘I love you, Mommy. What are you doing, Mommy? How’s work, Mommy?’ That stuck with me. She never really called me ‘Mommy’ before.”
During the week of May 19, Jazmin collapsed during a neighborhood fight. A video shared online appears to show the moment, but for Janelle Calderon, it was a phone call from police that changed everything.
“I started calling her phone over and over,” Jazmin’s mother said. “I told myself, ‘If she answers, it’s not her.’ But she wouldn’t answer. And as a mom, I just felt it.”
She was asked to identify her daughter’s belongings at the hospital.
“They brought out a little container and took out her ring — the one she got for her 15th birthday with her birthstone,” Janelle Calderon said. “That’s when I knew. I knew it was her.”
Since then, Jazmin has been on life support. Her mother has not left her side.
“There’s no way to explain what I’m going through. What her siblings are going through. What our family is going through,” Janelle Calderon said. “It’s unexplainable.”
The Midland Police Department says the investigation is ongoing, and they have been in contact with the family during the process. However, Janelle Calderon said communication has been minimal.
“He couldn’t tell me anything. Just, ‘We have the phones. We have search warrants,’ and that’s it,” Jazmin’s mother said. “The injuries don’t lie. I want whoever did this to my baby held accountable.”
She’s also heartbroken over the video of the fight — and the fact that no one stepped in to help.
“The mom recording instead of helping her — she zoomed in on her. Pretty much laughed at her,” Janelle Calderon said. “Instead of being an adult, being a mother, and calling 911. I think if that had been done, it would have made a big difference in my daughter’s life. Those minutes would have counted a lot.”