GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — While the Grand Rapids Police Department has not officially named the man involved in a shootout with officers Thursday, family at the scene identified him as 30-year-old Patrick Jones.
He is accused in the Oct. 11 shooting death of Tamiqua Wright, a 30-year-old mother from Grand Rapids.
Wright's cousin, Shaquiya Morris, says she hopes people take domestic violence seriously so another life isn't lost in the community.
"(Tamiqua) was very smart. She was loving, and most definitely the light of the party," she says.
It's been almost two months since Wright was murdered in Grand Rapids. Morris says Wright was a mother of five and a pharmacy tech.
"She was focused on her family, her kids to be technical, just trying to do what she can as a single mother for them," Morris says.
Police say Wright was shot and killed while she was driving by Jones. Earlier this week, law enforcement put out an alert to be on the lookout for him. He died in a shootout with police Thursday.
"It gives the family some type of closure," Morris says. "I don't even know what to say, because I don't want to offend anybody or anything, but it's just like, I just feel like what goes around comes around. That's basically all I have to say."
She says Wright and Patrick had a child together, and she says her cousin was a victim of domestic violence.
"This necklace that I actually have on is a purple heart, and it has Tamiqua's ashes in it" Morris says. "Ever since I put it on I never took it off. She called me her heartbeat. I call her my heartbeat. So that's why I got the heart. The colors is for the domestic violence awareness and it's just like, I still have her close to where she always says she'll be."
In the last two weeks before Wright died, Morris says they talked on FaceTime every day.
"When she didn't answer the phone, and I'm like, 'Okay, what's going on?'" Morris says. "I (woke) up, and I see on Facebook that she was gone. So it's just like, this was eye opener to me, that when people say, God lends you his angels, and one day he'll need them back. I felt that."
Morris says Wright's children are being taken care of by family.
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