Officer Laquandia Cooley was on duty when authorities were dispatched to a shooting that took place in Hazlehurst, about 30 miles south of Jackson, Mississippi, on Sunday, WLBT reports.
When Cooley arrived on the scene, she realized the victim was her son Charles Stewart Jr.
Just a few blocks from the Hazlehurst Police Department, 20-year-old Stewart was found laying on the ground with a gunshot wound to his head.
PHOTO: Charles Stewart, Jr., 20, was shot and killed Early Sunday morning in Hazlehurst. His mother, Officer Laquandia Cooley, would be the one to discover her son’s body lying on Larkin Street. https://t.co/EPkLnA3EdA pic.twitter.com/HgQUhtPWNJ
— WLBT 3 On Your Side (@WLBT) January 4, 2022
“We initially responded to the call, not knowing when I made it over there, the person was going to be my son that was laying there,” Cooley told the news station.
Officers responded to the scene around 2 a.m., according to Darion Murray, Hazlehurst’s chief of police, WJTV reports.
Cooley described her shock, saying, “As we get out, I look and I was like, ‘This is my son, this is my son. … So, I literally just go into a breakdown, you know? Like, why? Who would do this to my son?”
“I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing. I was seeing my own son laying there on the ground dead,” Cooley said as she expressed her disbelief. “It was pretty much a panic. It was just, it was too much.”
Charles Stewart, the victim’s father, told WLBT that “it’s traumatizing for the whole family.”
”We’re just trying to cope day to day. Just trying to figure out why this happened and who could have done this,” he said.
As of Tuesday, there are no suspects, however, Murray said the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation will lead the investigation.
