A local park hosted its third annual Sickle Cell Anemia Benefit over the weekend.

Carter Park in Carthage not only gave people a place to hang out, eat food, bash a car and win raffled prizes it provided entertainment from some local artists.

The acts included Asia’h Epperson, Rob White and Simon Says and D-Harb.

Epperson is best known for her appearance on last season’s American Idol. Rob White and Simon Says are a local hip-hop group that made its debut at the event and were well received. And D-Harb, also known as Dantley Harbin, sophomore mass communication major, and member of the D-Boyz, a local rap group, not only did his own set but jumped on stage for the last song by Rob White and Simon Says to freestyle a verse to a song he didn’t previously have a part in.

“I’ve been here all three years,” Harbin said. “Talesha was actually my cousin so I try to make it every year.”

The event started to help raise money for Talesha Mitchell, a victim of sickle cell anemia who died on August 26, 2006.

Sharon Davis, Mitchell’s mother, said it all started when Alan Davis, Mitchell’s nephew, and Alan Davis, Mitchell’s brother, started selling barbeque to help pay for her to stay with her daughter in St. Louis while she underwent treatment at Barnes Jewish hospital.

Now that Mitchell is gone the event has focused mainly on making the public aware of the disease.

“We’re trying to make people aware because there are people in this area with it,” Davis said.

The event has raised enough money to establish a non-profit organization and now Davis just wants to help out any local families that are going through what she went through two years ago.

Davis said every year the event gets a little bigger and a little better and in the future she hopes to create a scholarship fund for Mitchell’s two sons, which Davis is raising, and if possible create a scholarship fund for other kids that might be in the same situation.