Ashley Mays: 20-year-old mother strangled inside Atlanta motel

Ashley Mays, 20, the mother of a young son, was 8-months pregnant with a baby girl when she was strangled to death inside a motel outside Atlanta, Georgia on 11/18/2016. Police have arrested a 24-year-old man in the slaying.

Ashley Mays, 20, loved to dance, according to her family. The pregnant mother who already had a young son was brutally murdered at the Quality Inn and Suites just outside Atlanta, Georgia on November 18, 2016.

Atlanta police said that her hands and feet were Ziptied and that she was sexually assaulted, strangled and possibly suffocated with a pillow, according to WSB-TV.

What makes the incident even more tragic is that police said that Mays' unborn child died as well.

Video footage of the motel found a suspect, Terique Hall, 24, casually walking out of the building and hopping in a vehicle. Police said Hall works for a transport company that shuttles residents around the city and is associated with MARTA.

Law enforcement authorities don't know why the two went into the same room or if they knew each other previously.

Her mother, Brena McNeil, released this statement, obtained by WSB:

"Ashley loved her family very much. I am saddened by her tragic death but our faith will always be in the Lord. So we know Ashley is [in Heaven] dancing freely now."

The macabre slaying looks like "a potential serial killer," a law enforcement official told local media.

“It has the markings of someone who is potentially very disturbed, and someone who clearly, we needed to get off the streets,” Dr. Cedric Alexander, Director of DeKalb County Public Safety, told FOX 5 Atlanta.

Police said Hall is wanted for another sexual assault that happened a week from Mays' slaying. Police believe that the suspect they have in the DeKalb County jail is responsible for both incidents.

"We got him off the street, before someone else was hurt," Dr. Alexander told Fox 5.