On a December afternoon in 2019 in North Memphis, 25-year-old Akasuki L.D. Pettis Waller, a Black woman and mother of three, was riding with the father of her children along Alma Street when an ordinary weekday collapsed into tragedy. It was Tuesday, December 17, just a week before Christmas, and their three young sons were at the center of their lives.
The family lived in Memphis, Tennessee, and that day found Akasuki and her partner in a white SUV in the 800 block of Alma Street, a residential stretch in North Memphis.
Shortly after 3 p.m., neighbors heard gunfire and called police. When officers arrived, they found the SUV stopped on Alma Street. The boys’ father was in the driver’s seat, shot to death and pronounced dead at the scene. Akasuki had also been shot and was gravely wounded. Responding officers and medics rushed her from the street to Regional One Health, where she arrived in extremely critical condition, clinging to life as detectives began piecing together what had happened in the middle of that quiet afternoon.
News of the shooting spread quickly among family and friends. Relatives gathered at the hospital as doctors fought to stabilize the young mother. Through the night, the focus shifted from hope to heartbreak. Family members later described having to make the agonizing decision to remove Akasuki from life support early the next morning, after it became clear that her injuries were unsurvivable. By then, the violence on Alma Street had effectively taken both parents from three little boys in less than a day, leaving them orphaned just as the holiday season approached.
In the days that followed, Akasuki’s name appeared in online memorials and databases that track victims of gun violence. She was listed as having “lost to gun violence” on December 17, 2019, in Memphis, Tennessee, with friends and strangers alike lighting virtual candles and posting brief messages of support and sorrow. Some comments focused on the children left behind and asked whether anyone could step in to help care for them and support their mother’s family as they navigated life after the shooting.
Even as tributes accumulated, the search for answers lagged behind the grief. At the time of the initial reports, Memphis police stated that they were still investigating the circumstances of the deadly shooting on Alma Street, offering no description of a suspect, no details of a possible motive, and no information about how many people might have been involved. Publicly available accounts continue to describe the case in terms of an open investigation; there are no later reports indicating that a suspect was identified, no announcements of an arrest, and no record of charges, trial, or conviction connected to the murders of Akasuki and the father of her children. In the public record, the story of that afternoon in North Memphis remains frozen at the point where detectives were still asking questions and a family was left to mourn two lives cut short, with three young boys carrying the weight of a loss that has never been fully explained.
