In the pre-dawn hours of a Sunday morning in December 2016, 36-year-old Shaleka Spoon arrived for her shift at the Walmart on Cleveland Avenue in East Point, Georgia. A former Fulton County sheriff's deputy and a dedicated mother of three, she was also a student of criminal justice with graduation just six months away. Her friends and family remember her as a beautiful spirit and an amazing person to be around, someone you could talk to about anything.
She was a hard worker and a dependable team member, both in her previous law enforcement career and at her retail job.
Tragically, as she sat in her car in the employee parking lot around 4 a.m. on December 11, 2016, she was not alone. Her husband, 39-year-old Christopher Bernard Jones, had followed her to work. The two were seen arguing before Jones fatally shot Spoon and then turned the gun on himself in a horrific act of murder-suicide. The couple had been together for a long time and were the parents of three children, one son and two daughters.
The grim discovery was made as the first shoppers began to arrive at the store later that morning. Police cordoned off a section of the parking lot as they investigated the scene. News of the violent end to what had been a long-term relationship sent shockwaves through the community and left friends and family searching for answers. Co-workers, learning of Spoon's death as they arrived for their shifts, were overcome with grief. The Fulton County Sheriff's Office, where Spoon had served for seven years, released a statement mourning the loss of their former colleague, remembering her professionalism and warm disposition. Because the perpetrator took his own life at the scene, there were no arrests to be made in connection with Spoon's death.
