GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A graduation cake decorated with Antonio Thornton Jr’s picture in his cap and gown sat at the center of a party last weekend thrown by his mother, but the teenager tragically wasn’t there to see it.
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The 17-year-old, who went by TJ, was months away from graduating from Archer High School when someone shot and killed him outside Magnolia Lane Apartments in Bloomingdale on Dec. 14 while he was visiting family in Savannah.
“He was finished. He was finished just the end of the semester. All he had to do was walk across the stage. I just paid for his cap and gown; I paid for everything. I was just so excited, and that’s all he was ready for was his graduation,” his mother, Tyesha Abdullah, said.
So she gave him a home-going graduation party instead.
“Since I’m not able to give him a graduation party when he graduates, I said, then I’ll give him a graduation party now,” she said.
Abdullah, a children’s book author who teaches kids about safe and unsafe touch, said her son was more than just her child.
“He is my best friend. We do everything together,” she said.
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Thornton ran her website, managed her social media, and set up events when she couldn’t be there. The two had just been baptized together in October.
“He had his whole future ahead of him. He wanted to go to school to be an engineer,” Abdullah said.
The GBI arrested 16-year-old Franklin James on Dec. 27 and 17-year-old Terrance Green two days later. Both face charges of felony murder and armed robbery.
Police told Abdullah it was a robbery, but she struggles to understand why her son.
“He was in honors classes, about to graduate from school months. My child is nothing like that,” she said.
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The fact that teenagers are accused of killing another teenager haunts Abdullah as she grieves.
“It’s sad on everybody to go through something like that, and then it to be kids who are doing it to other kids,” Abdullah said.
Now she hopes sharing her pain will save another mother from experiencing the same loss.
“Maybe people will see my story and see a grieving mother who won’t never see her child again. I wouldn’t want this pain on anyone,” she said.
Her family has started a GoFundMe to help with expenses after the deadly shooting.
Click here to donate.
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