Now, the bride’s sister is trying to find the money to pay for her funeral, and her husband is mourning her death as he recovers in intensive care.
Teresa Dean said her sister, Alisha Stephens, 35, of Fairburn, and her newlywed husband went to Popeyes for a late-night snack Monday night.
But a teenager with a gun is accused of changing their lives forever by spraying their white Ford truck with bullets around 9:15 p.m. in the restaurant’s parking lot on Panola Road.
"She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know?" Dean, trying to hold back tears, said Friday.
Stephens, who was a mother of three, died after being taken to a nearby hospital. Her husband, who hasn’t been named by police, is in Grady Memorial Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit recovering from seven gunshot wounds, Dean told the news station.
“He’s got seven gunshot wounds, and he has one ... so close to his temple,” Dean said. “He’s got one under his tongue, too, which is why he can’t talk.”
Dean told the news station she doesn't have the money to throw her sister a proper funeral, so she set up a GoFundMe page that had raised about $1,500 as of Friday afternoon.
“She’s got three beautiful children that she leaves behind, and my heart just hurts for them,” Dean said. “The 14-year-old is really taking it hard, but she’s a spitting image of my sister.”
DeKalb police arrested 19-year-old Carlos Rodriguez for allegedly gunning down the couple and a third unnamed person in the parking lot that night. Police haven’t released a motive.
He faces murder charges along with an unrelated computer pornography charge, according to jail records. He remains in the DeKalb County Jail without bond.
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