ATHENS, Ga. — Family members of an expectant mom gunned down outside of her Athens apartment complex are grieving. But they're also begging for the end of the violence they say has become all-too-familiar to those who live there.
Police said Auriel Callaway was pregnant and running to get away from a shootout at her apartment complex in Athens Clarke County. But a bullet struck her down in front of her 3-year-old son.
Police are working to figure out who shot and killed her - an innocent victim of the violence that her family condemns.
"Every day life … it’s chaos,” said Callaway's grieving brother, DaQuan Faust. “Every day life. People die everyday, you know.”
He said his family is numb with grief, numb from dodging death, numb from random bullets that fly seemingly every day, they say, at the Clarke Garden Apartments.
This time, a bullet caught Callaway, a 24-year-old mother, pregnant with a baby girl.
Police said it was just after dark Monday night when she was shot, trying to protect her son, and they were just one quick sprint away from their door and the oasis of safety on the other side of it.
“She was an innocent bystander," Faust said.
“She was the most positive person you could meet," said DeShun Watkins, Callaway's cousin. "Good energy, always good energy, always had a smile - never seen her not smiling.”
Faust said she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time - except she wasn't.
“This is her home, this is where she stayed. So it shouldn’t be no problem for her to walk up the sidewalk, with her child," he said. “She got the right to come out her door and walk to the playground, or walk to the next building over, if she wants, you know.”
Athens-Clarke County Police are working to find out who is responsible. But Faust said it doesn't do much to change the chaos of what's become "normal." Because normal here - a distorted reality when it’s Auriel Callaway - pregnant and happy and trying to save her family - who is the one killed.