A stray gunshot killed an 80-year-old woman minutes after she watched her grandson obtain his high school diploma.
At around 11.45 a.m. Tuesday, Augustine Greenwood, 80, was walking back to her family’s automobile from Xavier University’s Convocation Center in New Orleans, where Morris Jeff High School was holding its graduation ceremony.
When the mother of six children and grandmother of 15 was shot, the family was preparing to leave for a supper to celebrate her grandson, Corey Lashley Jr.’s high school graduation.
Paramedics brought her to a local hospital, NOLA.com reports, but she was pronounced dead later in the afternoon.
By around 6pm, her daughter, Geraldine Greenwood-Lashley, took to Facebook to call out the gun violence that took her mother’s life.
‘Please people stop the violence,’ she wrote, including ‘a message to the young ladies that started all of this: “Today you took my world away from me and my family, all you had to do was walk away. It was graduation for my son, my mom was so happy to see her youngest grandchild graduate. You have ruined my son and families world, all you had to do was walk away.”
‘I am going to pray for you, may the Lord have mercy on you,’ she added. ‘I love you mama, you are with your heavenly family now.’
Two other unidentified men were also shot – one in the shoulder, and the other in the leg – but are expected to survive, according to the Associated Press.
New Orleans Police Department Deputy Chief Christopher Goodly said the shooting began after a fight between two women in the parking lot.
He said in a news conference on Wednesday morning that two to three people had been brought in for questioning, but no arrests have been made in the shooting.
‘This did not have to happen,’ he told WWL-TV.
‘We had a good amount of security here, interior coverage and exterior coverage,’ he said. ‘Xavier Police were on the scene along with Second District Police.’
Guns were later found on the scene, and police are continuing to investigate the shooting.
Those who graduated on Tuesday recounted the terrifying moments the shooting unfolded, as the Morris Jeff High School graduation was letting out.
‘We just heard gunshots,’ one of the graduating seniors told WWL-TV. ‘They were fighting, my cousin said “they’re fighting over there, let’s go.” Then I heard gunshots.’
Another graduate told the news station: ‘One of my friend’s grandma’s got shot right in the middle of the street, and she didn’t have anything to do with it.
‘She got shot in the head,’ the graduate said at the time. ‘She’s in critical condition.’
In the aftermath, New Orleans Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Henderson Lewis Jr issued a statement reading: ‘This has got to stop.
‘We must come together as a community, as a country, and address the damage caused by access to guns and to get to the root of the anger and despair that compels individuals to even think of harming others.’
Family members and friends are now trying to grip with the fact that what should have been a joyous day turned sad.
‘Instead of celebrating, we wound up sad, crying,’ Greenwood’s son-in-law Corey Lashley Sr. told NOLA.com.
‘It is sad,’ his son, Corey Lashley Jr. said to WDSU. ‘She came out to see me for my graduation. I did not exxpect any of this to happen.
‘I thought it would be a happy day, but it turned out to be a pretty bad day.’
He said he is still finding it hard to believe he would never see his grandmother, who used to pick him up from preschool, again – but said he will try his best to make her proud.
‘I am going to keep going strong for my grandmother, and do great things like I knew she would have wanted me to.’
Family members describe her as the rock of the family who cared deeply for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and was beloved by everyone in the neighborhood.
She grew up in New Orleans and was a retired housekeeper, who enjoyed going to the casinos with Geraldine.
In recent years, Geraldine wrote on Facebook, Greenwood ‘suffered with slight memory loss.’
Still, whenever Geraldine called, she wrote, Greenwood would say “I just took my medicine, I ate and I am watching Hallmark” or “I am in my “grandchildren garden.”
And Greenwood also seemed to be beloved by her community as well, with Dave Anderson posting on Facebook: ‘To know Augustine was to love her. She loved you right back in a manner that was absolute, unconditional and true.
‘I photographed her for many years, and was lucky enough to be able to experience her sweet, nurturing affection and warmth everyday I was in her presence.’
He noted that Greenwood ‘dubbed herself “Black Grandma”‘ to his children and was ‘always, ALWAYS attending to “her babies” as she called her beautiful kids and grandkids.
‘I love you Miss Augustine. I ache for your family,’ Anderson wrote. ‘Thank you for being the literal definition of a rock in my mind.
‘And let’s also salute moms, grandmas and the millions of indefatigable black women like her as we honor and mourn her great soul and beautiful life.’