Grieving Mother Gives Picture of Surviving Son to Media Instead of Picture of Dead Child

DETROIT (WXYZ) - This is as much a story as anything about a mother's grief. Chantay Anderson lost her two year old son Jasiah McCollins this weekend when someone firebombed her eastside Detroit home.

In her grief she gave action news reporter Tom Wait a damaged photograph and told him it was the only picture left of her dead son. She asked whether Action News could find someone to repair the damaged photo

I took the challenge. For two days Channel 7 editor Teresa Simmonds and I worked on the photogrtaph with Photoshop, painstakenly replacing, repairing and recreating the photo pixel by pixel.

Today I presented Chantay with the repaired picture and was given a stunning answer to my simple question: "Is this Jasiah?"

"The picture is my seven year old," Chantay told me from outside the Swanson funeral home on McNichols, "but both my kids look so much alike." "I did not have a picture to show the news and I was anxious to get a picture of something that looks like my baby 'cause my baby was dead in a fire."

The picture she gave us, that we meticulously repaired, was that of 7 year old Jamari McCollins when he was Jasiah's age.

Chantay did find one tiny cell phone snapshot of her dead son. She didn't know how to get it out of the phone and asked if we could help her with that.

As it turns out, that's all she has left of her baby.

The funeral is scheduled for Tuesday, July 19th at Swansons funeral home on McNichols at 10am. Chantay told us the funeral home has offered to pick up almost all the expenses. But she still needs flowers and asks if we could find someone to donate flowers to the funeral home.