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Tween Girls’ Lemonade Stand Raises $10,000 For Dallas Police Association In Wake Of Killings

By Heather Tooley
Published on: 13:33 PST, Jul 12, 2016

Here’s a feel good story in the wake of the Dallas police shootings: a lemonade stand that two tween girls set up raised $10,000 for the Dallas Police Association. When 12-year-old Lauren Roach and 11-year-old Landry Nelon learned that the shootings killed five police officers and injured seven others, they wanted to help.

The two tweens had a little bit of help from other friends as well — Emmy Roberts, 9, and her sister, Lily Roberts, 8. All of them were able to bring in $10,000 at their lemonade stand in North Dallas. The homemade lemonade was 50 cents per cup and they also offered baked goods.

Lauren’s mother, Tracey Roach, told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth that a lot of people didn’t want the lemonade, but wanted to donate money for a great cause.

“People were just driving by,” Roach said. “They didn’t want lemonade. They didn’t want anything, just giving them 20s, 50s, you name it, just giving money. And everybody was saying, ‘Back the blue, back the blue, we support Dallas, we support families, help Dallas become a better place.'”

Lauren and Landry had a goal of earning maybe $100, but that was soon exceeded!

“We felt really bad for all the victims’ families,” Lauren said. “At first we thought we would get about $100, but after we got to about $5,000, we realized we could really get this really high.”

“We just really feel that every little penny counted,” Landry said.

Landry told WFAA 8 News that they went through multiple gallons of lemonade during their charity work that racked up thousands of dollars in two days.

“20 gallons,” Landry said. “We went through a lot of lemonade.”

The tweens presented a check in the amount of $10,000 to the Dallas Police Association on July 11, a mere four days after the violent attack in which a 25-year-old African-American military veteran ambushed law enforcement and opened fire on white police officers in retaliation of two killings in Minnesota and Louisiana of African-American men at the hands of white police.

Other charitable contributions to the Dallas Police Association have been made. Southwest Airlines donated $75,000 and the Houston Police Department donated $20,000. Some of the funds will go towards supporting the families of murdered officers Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, and Lorne Ahrens.

The Dallas Police Association hasn’t calculated all of the donations, but it’s estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point.

Shooter Micah Xavier Johnson shot at police during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest on July 7. Police tried negotiating with the suspect while he was hiding out in a college parking lot, but talks broke down. Johnson was reportedly taunting police and wanted to know how many cops he’d killed. The shooter said he was distraught over the “recent police shootings” that took the lives of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Johnson was determined to kill white people, especially white police officers. When it was clear authorities weren’t able to rationalize with the shooter, they sent in a remote-controlled robot with a bomb police detonated.

Stories like the one above about the tweens setting up a lemonade stall show there are generous and proactive citizens out there trying to make a difference. When it’s young people like the ones in this story, it’s all the more moving. At a time of such incredible loss for the victims’ families and the Dallas Police Department, this gesture is one bright moment during a very dark time.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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