MIAMI – Five-year-old Jabbar said he was doing well in school, and he was ready to show off his spelling skills. From the kitchen at a home in the Villas of St. Agnes in Miami's Overtown neighborhood, his aunt and father looked on with pride.

The kindergartner smiled when his dad said he was a strong boy and his aunt said he was smart. And after spelling out his name, he moved on to more difficult words. But when he spelled "B-A-L-L," he looked down to the floor.

He said that the word sometimes makes him sad. About a month ago, he saw his 10-year-old cousin, Marlon "Merv" Eason, fall to the ground. The fourth-grade student was dribbling a basketball when a stray bullet killed him March 25, police said.

"Sometimes after school, I think he's gonna come play with me," Jabbar said.

The first stage of grief is shock and denial. Minutes later, Jabbar rushed up the stairs to get some pictures of "Merv" and said, "Look ... he taught me [how] to hold a football."

Jabbar's nightmare happened near Paul Laurence Dunbar Elementary School and near where Miami Jackson Senior High School's student Pedro Joaquin Uriarte, 18, was shot dead in November. It happened a day after Booker T. Washington High School football player Richard Hallman, 18, was shot dead.

"Innocence of our community is being stolen one murderous bullet at a time," Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said on Twitter, after the little kindergartner lost his cousin. "Four children shot within two hours during spring break."

A Local 10 News data analysis of Florida Department of Education records for two school years revealed that Miami-Dade County students are also experiencing violence daily in some public schools.

Fighting reports made up for 60 percent of the school district's safety incidents during 2013-2014 and 2012-2013. During both years, about 28 percent of the fights reported in Florida were in Miami-Dade County schools.

'Domestic violence'

The cyclical nature of violence has teachers and administrators dealing with some challenging external influences. 

Street violence is not the only factor affecting children. Florida Department of Education safety incident reports revealed the schools reporting the most fights were in neighborhoods that struggle with crime and poverty.

When some children are not in school, they are being exposed to violence at home. In Miami-Dade County, the cases of domestic violence have been increasing since 2011, Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show.

Financial strain, unemployment and living in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods has an impact on domestic violence, studies show. Some experts believe poverty is also related to child abuse. And if that link is real, county research shows poverty has been more prevalent in Miami-Dade than in the rest of Florida.

'Poverty'

In some cases students are from immigrant families seeking refuge in South Florida from the violence and economic instability of their countries. Most of the schools with fighting problems had a high population of low-income and minority students, eligible for a reduced or free lunch.

In southwest Miami-Dade's Homestead, where U.S. Census data shows a Hispanic or Latino majority, Mandarin Lakes K-8 Academy reported 96 percent of the school's safety incident reports were fights. At the nearby Cambell Drive Middle School, 92 percent of the reports were fights.

In northwest Miami-Dade's Brownsville, where U.S. Census data shows an African-American majority, Brownsville Middle School reported that 81 percent of the school's safety incident reports were fights. At the nearby Earlington Heights Elementary School, 88 percent of the reports were fights. The middle school had one incident where there were more than books in book bags. 

WEAPONS POSSESSION CASE

"They took him [student] in the room and they searched his book bag," Brownsville Middle School student Joshua Griffin said in September 2014 when school police responded to reports that there were two guns in school. "And then he tried to run, but they slammed him on the floor."

VIDEO ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Brownsville Middle feud recorded

'Street crime'

Most of the schools reporting fighting problems were in neighborhoods where crime rates were much higher than the national average. Four of the 10 Miami-Dade County schools reporting the most fighting incidents were in Miami Gardens; another four were in downtown Miami and the remaining two in south Miami-Dade.

For the last two school years, North Dade Middle School in Miami Gardens has stood out as one of the schools with the most fights in Miami-Dade County. It was the sixth school during 2012-2013. After a 16-percent increase, it rose to third with the most reported fights in Florida during 2013-2014.

VIDEO ON SOCIAL MEDIA:  Chaos ensues at North Dade Middle during fight

'Racial tensions'

With diversity in schools, there are also some racial tensions among African-Americans, Haitian-Americans, Cuba-Americans, Dominicans, Central Americans and South Americans, several teachers in Miami-Dade County said.

At Cutler Bay Middle School in south Miami-Dade, about 50 percent of the students are African-American and 40 percent are Hispanic. Records show the school had the most reported fights in the state during 2013-2014, after a 40-percent increase. During 2012-2013, it was the ninth in the state.

LITTLE HAITI: Toussaint L'Ouverture was the public elementary school with the most reports of fighting in Florida. With 484 students, there were 127 reports of fights.

With about 1,095 students enrolled, the school reported during 2013-2014 that there were slightly more fights than Florida's Pinellas County school district, which covers an estimated 104,000 students in 140 schools.

There is a similar issue at Jose de Diego Middle School in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, where about 50 percent of the students are Hispanic and about 40 percent are African-American. It was fifth in the state on fighting reports last year, after experiencing a 49-percent increase.

'Hope'

But although these schools have experienced increases, fighting reports in Miami-Dade County and Florida decreased by about seven percent. Battery reports referred to law enforcement also decreased in both Florida and Miami-Dade County. There were also no homicides reported in Florida schools last year, although there were homicides of students outside school grounds.

The house in Overtown where Jabbar witnessed the homicide was filled with despair. Jabbar said he takes his red Super Mario Bros. mini-backpack to school even when he is sad. He already knows that counting forward means you are adding and counting backward means you are subtracting. He wants to be a toy salesman when he grows up, he said.

"One, two, three, four steps from here," he said while pointing to the porch and to where his cousin died.

Now he comes home to a memorial full of stuffed animals and some of Marlon's toys. He said that when he walks by there, he remembers his grandmother screaming after the sound of gunfire. He also remembers they prayed for him many times after he died, he said.

"We have many pictures" of him, Jabbar said. "One day, I'm going to count all of them."

INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: Miami-Dade public schools 2012-2013 reports

CHART: South Florida public schools' 2013-2014 reports

GRAPHIC: Percentage changes of safety incidents in Miami-Dade

Follow Local10.com reporter Andrea Torres on Twitter @MiamiCrime