Post by Scumhunter on May 10, 2016 8:49:21 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: drekastylez.com)
From the Houston Chronicle website:
RICHMOND - Tyeisha Martin battled and survived the flooded streets of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and, after an arduous journey through three states, eventually settled in Houston like thousands of others who were forced from their homes.
Martin's hurricane story, chronicled in Seventeen magazine three months ago, came to a tragic and violent end. The 19-year-old was found slain last week in a ditch along an isolated road in Fort Bend County.
"This was my baby. I feel real, real sad and real mad. Somebody took her away from me before she even began to live her life," said her mother, Cabrini Williamson, a hurricane evacuee who lives in Dallas.
Martin, who lived in Houston and had a 2-year-old daughter, is the latest of more than two dozen Louisiana hurricane evacuees involved in a violent death in the Houston area.
Last month, Houston police said as many as 29 people have been either victims or suspects in homicide cases in Houston. Police said Monday they had no updated numbers.
Fort Bend County Sheriff's detectives have not come up with a motive and have made no arrests in the Martin case, said Lt. Jim Pokluda.
Pokluda said investigators consider several people to be suspects but have not focused on any one person.
In the story in the December issue of Seventeen, told in the first person to reporter Julia Dahl, Martin described her escape from a flooding house with her sister Quiana Martin, and her sister's boyfriend.
"We climbed out of the dining-room window onto the roof of a parked car that was right there. In the pouring rain we scrambled onto the roof of the house. Quiana and I looked at each other, terrified and burst into tears. 'How are we going to survive?'" she said.
"What if I never saw Daniesha (her daughter) again. We hugged tightly, bawling," she said in the article.
The path that led Tyeisha Martin from the water-choked neighborhoods of New Orleans to a ditch in Fort Bend County started the morning Hurricane Katrina struck the Louisiana coast in late August.
Martin took her small daughter to the home of the child's father nearby. Her mother eventually picked up the toddler and brought her to Houston.
As described in the Seventeen article, Martin and her sister, and her sister's boyfriend were in his home near Jackson Avenue when the water started seeping into the one-story house.
"The pressure from the water busted the door down. The water was up to our necks so we had to escape out a window," Quiana Martin said Monday from her home in Marietta, Ga.
After reaching the roof of the house, the three began to work their way down the street through high water, taking refuge on a series of rooftops.
Eventually they found their way to a two-story house.
"The first floor was covered in water all the way to the top of the stairs," Quiana Martin said. Tyeisha, Quiana and her boyfriend made "help" signs and placed them outside.
"The next day we heard the helicopter and we were rescued," Quiana Martin said.
After stops in New Orleans; Baton Rouge, La.; and Meridian, Miss., Tyeisha Martin and her sister arrived in McDonough, Ga., south of Atlanta.
Tyeisha Martin stayed in Georgia about three weeks before coming to Houston, where her mother was taking care of Daniesha.
It was at a church shelter in McDonough that free-lance writer Dahl, who was working for Seventeen, met Tyeisha.
"She was beautiful, I mean stunning," Dahl said.
She said Martin wanted to go to Houston to reunite with her mother and child.
Martin's plan to start over in life ended before it really got started.
Police said it appears she was shot in the ditch where her body was found Thursday morning at FM 361 and FM 1994 in the southern part of the county.
She had been shot at least one time but Pokluda did not want to disclose the location of her wound.
Pokluda said police believe she was last seen alive Wednesday evening.
Detectives identified her, Pokluda said, through a fingerprint check. He said her fingerprints were on the police database because of an arrest for a minor crime in New Orleans.
"Right now we have very little to go on," he said.
While police look for clues, family members are trying to make funeral arrangements and come to grips with the violent death that has left a toddler without a mother.
www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Young-mother-slain-months-after-escaping-Katrina-1895949.php
Thoughts? The above was an admittedly old article (from 2006) about the case but it was the most appropriate not too short or too long summary I could find since the AMW archive now only has the introductory and not full case description. Tyeisha's story was aired on the March 22nd, 2008 episode of America's Most Wanted and as far as I know it is still unsolved.
Other Relevant Links:
web.archive.org/web/20090720234158/http://www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=54064
wp11.americanobserver.net/2006/10/americas-most/
Admin Note #1: Based on crime location, our advice for anyone with information on Tyeisha Martin's murder would be to contact Fort Bend County (Texas) Crime Stoppers: www.fortbend.crimestoppersweb.com/
Admin Note #2: If you have any news-related updates on this case, please contact us here: amwfans.com/thread/1662/website-contact-form