The family of a pregnant rapper says she was killed in Atlanta hours before she was going to catch a flight to see her sister. Now they believe the shooting was targeted.
At 14 weeks pregnant and with a gender reveal party on the horizon, her family told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution things had settled into place.
Qualeisha Barnes, also known as “Siditty,” was a Detroit rapper and Atlanta-area nursing student who had talked about wanting a baby for more than a year.
“I know her as Qualeisha. I know her as LeLe. I know her as we, in the same house, in the same bed. That’s what I know her as,” Barnes’ sister Shatara Davis told 11Alive. “All that friend stuff, I don’t care about none of that. That was my sister. That was my baby.”
Davis told the AJC that Barnes was coming to see her for support during her pregnancy.
“She was coming so I could take care of her,” she told the AJC. “She just needed her sister.”
But Barnes never made it onto the plane.
Atlanta police report Barnes, 36, was found shot dead around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday inside her car, less than 15 minutes from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where the AJC reports she was meant to catch a 9 a.m. flight.
“I heard gunshots, like four or five, and then a car — a Honda — just flew up the street,” resident Melvin Mapp told FOX 2. “Twenty or thirty minutes later, cops were everywhere.”
Her mother, Francine Lopez-Stewart, told 11Alive she believes more than one person may be responsible for her daughter’s death and wants accountability for anyone involved.
“If you investigate something that causes a murder, then you need some kind of, I mean, you need something,” she said. “I think you need to go to jail too.”
According to the family, Barnes had lived in metro Atlanta for about a decade and was working toward a future in health care. Her mother told 11Alive she was an aspiring nurse.
“She made the dean’s list. She had like two more semesters to go,” Lopez-Stewart said. “She was so proud of herself, and we were so proud of her.”
Barnes’ mother said her daughter’s stage name reflected her personality.
“She loved makeup. She loved dressing up. She loved beauty. She was Siditty,” she told 11Alive.
Atlanta police told Atlanta Black Star they are still working to identify suspects.
