A man has been charged with murder in the shooting of a mother of four at a Clayton County apartment complex Thursday, police confirmed Monday.
The woman, identified by her family as 34-year-old Tonya White in a GoFundMe campaign, was found around 11:30 a.m. in a vehicle parked at the Regal Forest Apartments along Trammell Road, according to police. The suspect, 40-year-old Jornel Jamil Williams, also was in the vehicle and was still holding his weapon, according to a news release.
He initially refused to get out, police said, but as officers began to evacuate nearby apartment buildings, Williams put down the weapon and surrendered. He was charged with malice murder, aggravated assault and possession of a weapon during the commission of a crime.
Police did not release information about their relationship.
The victim sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was already dead by the time officers arrived, the release states.
While police have not officially released her identity, her family wants her name to be shared and remembered, they told Channel 2 Action News.
“We just want to make sure that everybody out here in this neighborhood know that we love her and we care about her,” her bother, Gregory White, said.
Her mother, Debbie Grubbs, wrote on the GoFundMe that her daughter “was the most loving and giving person in our family. She was the type to always include any and everyone, including people that she didn’t even know.”
Tonya White was a mother to three girls and one boy, Grubbs wrote. The children were between the ages of 4 and 16, Channel 2 reported.
On Saturday night, the family gathered for a memorial at the apartment complex where she died and canvassed the neighborhood, asking neighbors if they saw or heard anything that day, according to Channel 2.
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