“She was my best friend. She was my travel partner.”
It’s been nearly three months since 20-year-old Keichia Michele Greene was shot and killed in DeKalb County, but her mother, Shelia Greene, is still searching for answers.
“These are some of her drawings behind me,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an exclusive interview from her home in Memphis, Tennessee, motioning to a piece of her daughter’s artwork — a sketch of a woman’s face — displayed in her living room.
“She was very talented. She loved life.”
The younger Greene had recently moved to Atlanta from her hometown to work as a caregiver at Dignity Place, a home care organization that serves physically limited and disabled people, her mother said. Keichia Greene was looking forward to moving into a new apartment in metro Atlanta in late June.
The approval for the apartment lease came through the day after she was found in her car with a gunshot wound to the head.
Now, Shelia Greene is offering $5,000 of her own money to anyone with information about her daughter’s death. DeKalb police have not been able to identify any suspects or find new leads, she said.
Keichia Greene was found by DeKalb police just before 1:15 a.m. on June 22, according to an incident report obtained by the AJC. Emergency medical personnel pronounced Greene dead at the scene.
“I had come down 10 days before, on a Saturday,” Shelia Greene said. “The last picture of us together is on my phone right now.”
According to the incident report, officers responded that morning to a call at the Avana City North apartment complex at 3421 Northlake Parkway. In the parking deck for the complex, they found a Chevrolet Impala from Tennessee that had crashed head-on into a parked Ford Taurus. While approaching the crash scene, the officer noticed a woman in the driver’s seat of the Impala.
Both the Taurus and Impala were damaged in the wreck, but the Impala had sustained additional damage, the incident report said. The right side of its windshield was bashed in, and there were two bullet holes: one in the driver’s-side window, the other in the driver’s-side door.
Shelia saw photos of the car and said the damage to the windshield looked strange. A hole had been smashed through the glass, but nothing was found inside the car that could have punched through.
“I thought they might find a piece of brick inside the car or something like that, but there was nothing,” she said.
She asked police if it was possible her daughter hit an attacker with her car, and whether investigators had checked hospitals for someone who had been injured in that manner. She said police told her they had not contacted any hospitals.
Investigators found a gun between Keichia’s legs, the report said. There were also three shell casings found about 10 feet away from the Impala, but investigators could not determine if they were from Greene’s gun or another weapon.
Keichia’s father works for the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, so she was experienced with guns and licensed to carry, her mother said.
Shelia said she decided to offer her own reward because she’s become frustrated with the investigation. The apartment complex where her daughter was found has not been able to provide any security camera video that would help police. As far as Shelia knows, the complex did not have cameras in the parking deck or overlooking the car entry and exit gate. Detectives told her they would have to subpoena the apartment complex to get the code Keichia used to enter the parking deck that night.
“We are not able to publicly comment other than to express our deepest sympathies for the victim and her family,” a representative for Avana City North said in an email to the AJC.
Though Shelia has continued to push for justice from Memphis, her life has not been the same.
“We had a lot of times together,” she said of her daughter. “I haven’t been out of the city since. I don’t have anybody to travel with.”
Anyone with information is asked to contact the DeKalb police homicide assault unit at 770-724-7850.
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