Abria Spriggs’s great-uncle has urged people in crisis to reach out after the 31-year-old homeless mother killed her 2-year-old daughter and herself near a Georgia church.
James Kennedy, Spriggs’s great-uncle, told 11Alive that police believe Spriggs shot the toddler before turning the gun on herself. The pair were discovered Sunday morning inside a car parked near Milford Baptist Church in Cobb County, Georgia, where they had been living.
The mother and daughter were “beyond life-saving measures” when found, the Cobb County Police Department said in a statement. Officers responded to the scene after the bodies were discovered with fatal gunshot wounds.
Kennedy said Spriggs had just moved to the Atlanta area from Augusta. She had a history of expressing suicidal thoughts, he added, though her family did not grasp how desperate her situation had become.
“I did not know she was homeless,” Kennedy said of his relative’s circumstances. “If I knew … just come in my house and we will find you somewhere.”
The great-uncle used the tragedy to press others to open up about their struggles rather than suffering in silence.
“Talk to someone. Do not hold it in. Talk to someone. Someone that you know cares,” he said.
Kennedy indicated that family members had been unaware of both Spriggs’s housing instability and the severity of her emotional distress. The mother and child had been staying at or near Milford Baptist Church, a detail that emerged only after the deaths.
The Cobb County Police Department said Tuesday that the investigation remains ongoing. The department declined to provide additional comment on the case.
Spriggs’s death marks a grim endpoint to what relatives described as a period of escalating need that went unrecognized by those closest to her. The family’s statements suggest no immediate intervention had been attempted because the depth of her crisis was not visible to them.
Police have not released further details about the weapon involved or how long the mother and daughter had been inside the vehicle before being discovered. The medical examiner’s findings have not been made public.