Sherika Woods and her longtime boyfriend had finally started talking about marriage. They already had two kids together, a boy, 7, and a girl, who is almost 6.
On Monday afternoon, Anterrance Dejuan Gresham, 30, left their Lithonia home to make a trip to the store and told his would-be bride he’d be back. But as he was making his way home on Chupp Road off Covington Highway, someone shot him in the back, a wound that would soon cause his death.
DeKalb County police are investigating. They have announced no arrests or motive.
Woods told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she can’t imagine why someone would want to hurt Gresham, who made his living fixing cars and motorcycles.
“He was just a really great person. He gave to everybody,” Woods said Wednesday. “I’m really not sure why this happened. All I know is, it wasn’t meant for him.”
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Police haven’t said who the intended target was.
A police report said Gresham had just come from Lithonia Package when he was shot at about 6 p.m., around the corner from Stoneview Elementary.
Gresham was with his cousin, who had spotted him riding his scooter from the store.
The two paused for a drink of what Gresham bought. Then the cousin said he heard seven or eight shots, according to a police report.
The cousin was shot in the thigh and fled, calling a friend to rush him to DeKalb Medical Center’s Hillandale campus.
Woods was about to start dinner when word came in a phone call that she needed to go check on Gresham.
“By the time I got there, there was police on the scene. He was flat on the ground. He was moving a little bit, trying to talk,” Woods said. “They wouldn’t let me get closer.”
Gresham spoke to a police officer, saying a silver car drove by as the gunshots were fired.
Then he couldn’t talk anymore.
Woods struggled with what to say to her kids, who are two of Gresham’s five children.
“I just told them he was gone home,” she said.
They didn’t understand.
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