LaTeshia Danner turned 33 on Friday, and her father had left her a teddy bear and some balloons.
Later Friday night, she stopped by his house to thank him for her gift. Willie Jones was asleep, but Danner woke him up to make sure he knew how much she appreciated the gesture.
“She gave me a hug and kiss,’’ Jones said.
He had no way of knowing that would be the last time he would see her. Danner, less than 24 hours later, would be shot and killed in the parking lot of her east Birmingham apartment complex.
“No parent should have to bury their child,’’ a grieving Jones said Sunday. “She should have been burying me. But the Lord has a purpose for her.”
Danner died at UAB Hospital, not long after she was shot multiple times. Birmingham police Sgt. Rod Mauldin said officers responded about 8:19 p.m. Saturday to the 7500 block of Second Avenue North. Danner was pronounced dead at 9:46 p.m., according to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office.
Police have not announced any arrests in the case. Friends, family and police said the slaying was domestic in nature.
Danner grew up in Fairfield and graduated from high school there. She was employed at Kamtek where she worked on the auto parts assembly line and it was there she became friends with coworker Porsche Davis.
“We were going on our third year together,’’ Davis said Sunday. “She was honestly a good person. When I say she was so full off life and personality, she was just a fun person to be around. She had this distinct voice that nobody else had.”
She said she was stunned when she learned her friend had been killed. “I really hate this happened to her. It was shock to me,’’ she said. “She was always the type to give people the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t see bad in nobody.”
“Her smile lit up a room,’’ Davis said.
Though Danner didn’t have children of her own, friends and family say she doted on her niece and nephew. She was close to her entire family. “She was a family person,’’ her father, Jones, said.
“She loved everybody. She had a beautiful smile with perfect white teeth,’’ he said.
Jones said his daughter had told him she wanted to move to Hoover. “She said people in Birmingham were getting killed and she didn’t want to die,’’ he said. “I’ve been saving up to buy her house. That was the one thing I wanted to do for her before I died.”
Jones said he only recently moved back to Birmingham a couple of months ago after being gone for the past five years. “I thank God for these past two months with her,’’ he said.
He said it was Danner that helped him turn away from drugs 10 years ago. “She was younger, and she yelled at me good one time,’’ he said. He said he’s been clean ever since.
“She stayed on me about staying out of trouble,’’ he said. “She thought she was my mama.”
He said he is devastated by her death, and now focused on giving her a proper burial. “A parent has to be a parent until the bitter end,’’ he said.
Danner is Birmingham’s 15th homicide of 2021. In all of Jefferson County, there have been 22 homicides including the 15 in Birmingham. Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
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