NEWTON COUNTY, Ga. — Sylesta Seabrum says her granddaughter Shanequa Sullivan was tiny, but she had a big heart.
Now she wants justice for her granddaughter, whose body was found in a metro Atlanta river eight years ago.
“She was angelic. She was very funny, very loving and giving spirit. I think it was unfair what happened to her. I think about her all the time,” she told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne.
“You could be having a bad day, and she would say something just uplifting,” she added.
in a Channel 2 Action News exclusive, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent asked for the public’s help to solve the 2018 murder of a young, developmentally disabled woman.
Shanequa Sullivan was 23 years old, 4-foot-11 and less than 100 pounds about the time MARTA security video captured images of her on Feb. 4, 2018, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where she did janitorial work.
It’s the last time investigators can confirm her whereabouts when she was alive before a fisherman found her unclothed body in the Yellow River in Newton County on March 3 of that year, says Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Amelia Maddox.
“I don’t see how she goes from Hartsfield-Jackson to Newton County on her own,” she said.
Newton County Sheriff’s Corporal Joshua Hicks said he has no doubt she was murdered.
Sylesta Seabrum says she was her granddaughter’s guardian for most of her life.
Sullivan was diagnosed with developmental disabilities, childlike in her thinking, joyful and trusting, maybe too trusting.
“She was, we believe, targeted and tricked into getting in a car or some type of transportation that day and had something obviously terrible happen to her,” Hicks said.
Maddox says the GBI joined the Newton County Sheriff’s Office in the investigation in 2024, and she and Hicks are asking people who took photos or video at the airport the afternoon of Feb. 4, 2018 — which happened to be Super Bowl Sunday — to provide them so investigators can search for clues in the background.
Hicks and Maddox say authorities have not recovered Sullivan’s clothing, either.
“She wore a burgundy smock with the ABM logo that was their standard uniform with black pants,” Maddox said.
Maddox said she hopes the killer has been arrogant enough to let something slip to someone with a conscience.
“This is somebody who was a predator. This is a somebody who is a monster, who went after a very fragile, innocent person who was very trusting,” Maddox said.
Sullivan’s family believe the killer will pay for taking their loved one’s life.
“In due time, he’s gonna get his justice one way or the other, not through us, through God. He or she is gonna have pay for what they did,” said Sullivan’s aunt, Lillie Seabrum.
“I get my strength from God because I couldn’t have came this far on my own strength. God has kept me standing this long,” Sylesta Seabrum said.
Sullivan’s grandmother said it would me the world to her if someone would call with information related to this case.
“I just want justice for my baby,” Sylesta Seabrum said.
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