Mary Jones was talking Monday about what happened to her daughter, a 25-year-old found shot in DeKalb County, facedown in a creek, and the mother's words began to tumble from her lips, almost uncontrollably.
“Justice is what I want. It will be served,” she said, choking on her words until she was almost sobbing, repeating: “It will be served. It will be served.”
“Somebody got to pay for this. What they done to my baby.”
What someone did to Tekeila Calloway was shoot her and leave her body in three feet of water in Barbashela Creek, not far from Redan High. It isn’t clear how Calloway got there; the mother said Calloway lived in Gainesville, some 55 miles away, as she had most of her life.
The body turned up last Wednesday as a man and his three small children were walking along the creek.
DeKalb police found blood on the bridge and are considering the case a homicide by gun.
But Lt. Lonzy Robertson, department spokesman, said Monday morning: “There are no leads at this time.”
Jones doesn’t have answers yet either, but she fears her daughter’s associations with gangs could have led to her death. The daughter revealed her gang ties (the mother isn’t sure the exact gang) about a year ago.
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“I was in shock to hear my daughter tell me that. I said, ‘That’s not your life. You wasn’t raised like that,’” Jones told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She just wanted to be with people who would look out for her, who would love her. She didn’t know what she was getting into.”
Friends who posted on social media following Calloway’s death were saddened to hear her fate. They recalled her as “sweet.”
Dana Render remembers walking to elementary school every day with Calloway and spending days on trampolines and bikes, or in front of the TV.
“Her grandmother would always read the Bible to us before school and helped us learn the books of the Bible and memorize verses,” Render told the AJC.
After middle school, Render moved away and fell out of touch with Calloway, though she got updates from time to time.
Jones said she talked to her daughter every day.
Every time the gang came up, the mother tried to talk her daughter into leaving it, Jones said.
“This gang thing is going to get you two things: dead or in prison,” Jones recalls telling the 25-year-old.
Last week, Jones didn’t hear from Calloway one day and considered filing a missing person report, but before she could, the call came about the discovery in Barbashela Creek.
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