Family looks for closure
Published 9:55 pm Monday, March 13, 2017
It’s been two years since Taffine Berry was shot and killed outside of a Selma nightclub on Marie Foster Street, and her family is still looking for answers.
Tuesday is the two-year anniversary, and her mother Deloise Smith is hoping someone out there has an answer to who shot and killed her daughter.
“It’s sad because I live through it every day,” said Deloise Smith, Berry’s mother. “It’s a sad thing looking at her kids’ sad faces every day. I don’t know what else to tell them or what else to say.”
Berry was a mother of three with one son and two daughters. She and her husband Tra Berry were shot outside of a nightclub on the 1400 block of Marie Foster Street on March 14, 2015.
The couple was standing outside of the club when shots rang out around 11:24 p.m. Taffine was struck in the neck and upper torso, while Tra was shot in the leg. Taffine died two days later.
Smith said her daughter’s death is something that constantly haunts her, especially since no one was ever arrested for it.
“It’s very tough on me. I cry day and night about my daughter. I cry going to bed. I cry waking up,” she said.
“I can be sitting down eating, and I notice tears have fallen down onto my plate crying about my daughter.”
Several months after Taffine’s death a reward was put up by the city of Selma for anyone with information about her killer, but no information that has led to an arrest has come up.
Smith said she could forgive whoever shot and killed her daughter, but she just wants to know the truth so her family can have some closure.
“I would ask them to please do the right thing. Turn yourself in whoever it is. I am a Christian woman, and I believe in forgiveness,” she said. “All I want them to do is to turn themselves in and tell the truth. I’d like to know the truth about who killed my daughter.”
Lashanda Smith, Taffine’s sister, said not knowing who is responsible for her sister’s death has changed her perception.
“We want some closure. I know whoever they get can’t bring my sister back, but it would give us some closure to know that the person that did it is in jail where they can’t hurt anybody else’s family,” she said.
Smith said she has gone to the police department countless times since her daughter’s death, but she hasn’t had much luck getting any information.
She just wants reassurance that her daughter’s case has not been forgotten about or lost in the shuffle.
District Attorney Michael Jackson said as far as he knows the case is still being investigated.
Phone calls to the Selma Police Department were not returned Monday.