Pregnant mother shot in head by kidnappers dies after giving birth
Pregnant mother shot in head by kidnappers dies after giving birth
A pregnant Georgia woman who was critically wounded in a brazen kidnapping that killed her fiance last weekend died after delivering a baby daughter.
Briana Brooks, 21, of Decatur, succumbed to her injures Thursday. Her husband-to-be, 24-year-old Jeronta Brown, was shot dead during the incident in Decatur last Saturday.
According to police, the young couple, who also had an 8-month-old baby, were kidnapped a week ago, handcuffed, shot in the head and dumped in the street 17 miles away from home.
The 21-year-old woman was seven months pregnant with the couple’s second child, 11Alive Atlanta reported. Doctors at Grady Memorial Hospital were able to deliver her via C-section before taking the mother off life support.
The couple’s grieving relatives said that on August 30, Brooks and Brown took their infant and Jeronta’s 14-year-old sister out to get some late-night dinner.
When they returned home after midnight, they were allegedly ambushed by a group of masked men. The teenage girl with them was able to get away with Brooks’ infant, but the couple was not as lucky.
According to Brooks’ aunt Myesha Brooks, after restraining the couple the abductors unsuccessfully tried to enter their family’s house by pretending to be FBI agents.
The woman told WXIA that initially, Brown was able to escape but when he saw that his fiancee was not behind him, he came back for her.
A short time after Brooks and Brown were pushed into the back of a brown van and whisked away, the man’s mother and stepfather got a call demanding a $150,000 ransom.
‘These boys are not playing,’ Kawana Brown recalled her son telling her on the phone after she asked the kidnappers to speak to him.
Jeronta Brown begged his mother to raise the money, and Mrs Brown promised to do all in her power to free him.
Early Sunday morning, a motorist came upon the heavily pregnant woman and her fiance lying in the street in Atlanta with bullet wounds to the head. Brown was pronounced dead on the scene.
So far, no arrests have been made. Police are now trying to determine if the couple’s abduction is related to another kidnapping that took place in the area Thursday.
