Tamika Trimble: 33-Year-Old Atlanta Mother Gunned Down While Baby In Backseat
Just three weeks before Christmas, police in the Atlanta-area are trying to find out who snuffed out the life of a 33-year-old mother. Tamika Trimble was found dead inside a car with her 1-year-old daughter in the backseat.
Trimble had seven children, from a high school teen to a toddler, according to accounts from people who knew her.
Trimble was shot to death by at least two gunmen, police said, the latest murder of an African-American woman in the majority-black city of Atlanta. Here is a GoFundMe account that her family set up.
Trimble's body was found after authorities responded to a shots fired call about 11:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2, 2017.
"I heard about seven maybe eight shots," neighbor Richard Jones told local media. He said he and other neighbors came outside and discovered a woman fighting for her life -- and in the backseat, what he initially thought to be a stuffed animal turned out to be a child.
"If it had been an accident, I would have opened up and try to help," Jones was quoted as saying. "But it was a crime scene and I didn't want to put my finger prints or smudge none... So we just kept telling her, 'Hold on.'"
But Trimble could not hold on.
"If you're going to shoot a woman and a child in the car, you have no respect, no morals, no value, no nothing," one neighbor told WSB-TV.
Police have reason to believe that there could be as many as two shooters and that Trimble was shot more than once in different locations, according to WXIA-TV. They believe she tried to flee the attack but was shot again at the second location.
The victim's grandmother told local media that she is trying to hold the family together to get through the holidays.
"I heard it’s a 17-year-old who shot my baby, and I say to you, please turn yourself in and tell what you know," Shelbra Trimble told WSB-TV. One of her children heard about his mother's death on his birthday.
A local entertainment complex has agreed to the 10-year-old to have a birthday party there. "It wasn't even a thought. It was how quickly can we get this done," Nicole Hage with Main Event Entertainment, told WSB.
They count it very unusual that the child was not shot, since the car was hit from several different angles.
"You've got two scenes where the vehicle was fired upon at two different places, so it's coming from all angles on the vehicle which is one of the reasons it's miraculous the toddler wasn't injured," an official was quoted as saying.
Law enforcement recovered an AR-15 at the scene, but have been mum on any possible motive or suspects. Police searched around for clues to the murder.
"They're canvassing the area, talking to people in the neighborhood to see if they may have seen or heard anything," Shiera Campbell told WXIA.
Campbell said that authorities are operating under the assumption that the shooting was not a targeted killing, but rather domestic.
Police are searching for suspects but are asking if anyone out there knows anything to contact the DeKalb County or Atlanta Police.