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A family is in mourning after a 29-year-old mother of two was shot and killed in a freeway shooting in Oakland on Thursday (November 18).
"She was beautiful, creative, energetic," Alicia Butler, mother of the shooting victim, Amani Morris, told NBC News Bay Area. Butler said Amani was traveling in the car with her fiancé and two young sons around 9 a.m. when someone opened fire at their car, killing Amani.
It's the 77th freeway shooting the area has seen this year, the outlet reported, and is being characterized as random.
Butler said she spoke to her daughter a mere 20 minutes before the shooting near the Bay Area Bridge toll plaza took place. Amani, her mom said, was headed to a second job interview in San Francisco.
"I started getting phone calls and I didn't want to believe it was true," Butler said, describing her daughter as a "good mom" and that her sons and fiancé were "her world."
According to the mother of Amani's fiancé, he heard the shots, but didn't realize Amani was hit.
"'What happened to mommy?' the oldest one said," his mother, Judy Holoman, told the outlet. "That's when he looked and saw that she was gone... blood was everywhere."
Amani's family is asking for the public's help in solving the shooting. Anyone with information is asked to contact the CHP investigation tip line at 707-917-4491.
"The only way that I think that it can be solved is if the public gets involved," Holoman said. "Somebody saw something. Come on guys, it was in the morning."
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The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255
The National Alliance on Mental Illness 1-800-950-6264
The Association of Black Psychologists 1-301-449-3082
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America 1-240-485-1001
For more mental health resources, click HERE.
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