Sitting underneath fluorescent lights in the Wellstar Kennestone Hospital waiting room, Shawnda Schafer watched cases of blood being taken into a surgery room, not knowing if they were for her 14-year-old son.
Just a few hours later, she was sitting beside her son, tightly holding his hand as a machine breathed for him.
Early in the morning of Oct. 17, Schafer’s son, Landon Andrews, and a 19-year-old man were shot when gunfire erupted at a large house party on Victoria Road near Woodstock, according to the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office.
At the time of the shooting, Schafer thought her son was asleep at a friend’s house, she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by phone this week.
Landon, a Kell High School student and athlete, hung out with friends at the mall the day before and asked his mother if he could spend the night with a friend, Schafer said. After talking to the friend’s mother, Schafer gave her son the green light. She even checked his location on her phone around 10:30 p.m. and could see Landon was just where he should be.
An hour later, just before going to bed, Schafer checked again. His location was not on the map anymore, she said.
Not yet worried, the mother sent Landon a text asking if he was OK. When he didn’t respond, she texted the friend’s mother to ask if the boys were sleeping. The mother said they were but decided to check for safe measure.
“Minutes later is when I got the call from his friend and he was hysterical, he was crying, he was telling me that he was sorry,” Schafer said, recounting the friend’s words: “Landon has been shot.”
Schafer threw on whatever clothes she could find and drove what felt like an endless 15 minutes to the home on Victoria Road. She was told by his friend that Landon had been shot in the foot, and she had reason to hope he would be OK.
Authorities believe the shooting stemmed from an earlier fight at a Kennesaw apartment, the video of which has been shared with the public. Police have not confirmed if Landon was at that fight or if he was the intended target of the shooting. Schafer said her son was not at the Kennesaw apartment.
Two ambulances flew past her car as she neared the crime scene, blue and red lights illuminating the pitch-black street. After finding out Landon had been taken to the Cobb County hospital, she sped down the road for another 25 minutes to see her son.
She sat in the waiting room alone for hours before she was joined by Landon’s friend and his mother. That’s when she “noticed the amount of blood that (the friend) had on his clothes.” She asked him again where Landon had been shot. This time he said in the stomach.
“My worry just completely went through the roof. I felt like I was gonna have like this very silent panic attack and that nobody would know what was going on in my mind,” Schafer said.
For what felt like a lifetime, Schafer watched the hospital staff walk by without any updates about her son. Eventually, doctors met Schafer and her husband in the waiting room and gave them the bad news: Landon “was not going to make it out of this.”
Walking into his room, Schafer saw her son surrounded by machines and took her place next to his bed. Playing with the 14-year-old’s hair, which she noted that “any other time, I wouldn’t have ever been able to do,” Schafer squeezed Landon’s hand for hours until the coroner came to take his body to the GBI.
Credit: Family Photo
Credit: Family Photo
“I didn’t know how to feel, what I was looking at, I just knew that was my baby laying there in that bed. I still had this really, really high hope that he was going to be OK,” Schafer said through tears.
It’s the little things Schafer said sting the most. She no longer wakes her son up for school in the mornings or picks him up from sports practice in the afternoons. It took her a full day to come to grips with the fact that Landon was gone.
“I looked at my husband ... and I said, ‘You know, by now, Landon would’ve already sent a text and said, hey mom, can you come and get me,’” Schafer recounted. “But he isn’t going to send that text, that text is never going to happen.”
Simply enjoying herself with her friends and family doesn’t feel right for Schafer anymore.
”I feel so bad, I feel so bad for laughing because I feel like I shouldn’t be able to laugh because I feel like if I am laughing then that’s me forgetting that my child isn’t here anymore,” Schafer said.
She is pleading with parents whose children attended the party to come forward, urging them to share any information.
“For the parents whose children were there, I think it’s such a blessing that they get to see their child, and at the same time, while I understand that some parents are trying to possibly protect their children, the police don’t care about anything that was going on at that home ... they just want to find who did this,” Schafer said.
Authorities have not identified the suspected shooter and continue asking those at the Woodstock party and Kennesaw fight to provide information by calling Cherokee County sheriff’s investigators at 678-493-4080. Tipsters can remain anonymous by contacting Crime Stoppers Atlanta at 404-577-8477, texting information to 274637 or visiting the Crime Stoppers website.
About the Author
