PINELLAS PARK — Jeremy Lamar Long didn't like being an only child.
"I really don't know why," said his mother, Montrice Woodard, "but he wanted a sister."
He was 11 when he got his wish with the birth of Jameshia Booker. He watched TV with her, took her to the park, even walked the 5-year-old to school.
Thursday, the 16-year-old teen who relished his role as big brother was killed when a gunman burst through an unlocked door of his family's home and shot him. His little sister was in the room.
Pinellas Park police were still trying to determine a motive Friday.
"We're calling it a home invasion, although it doesn't appear robbery was a motive," said Capt. Sanfield Forseth. "We don't believe this was a random act. We believe they were specifically there to target someone."
Montrice Woodard gave this account of what happened next inside her 81st Avenue N home:
The single gunshot traveled through the teen's upper body and shattered the sliding glass door behind him. The teen stumbled into his mother's room.
"Ma, I got shot," he told her, before collapsing.
Next, the gunman leveled the weapon at the 5-year-old girl before pressing it against the forehead of Long's uncle, Karl Woodard.
"He begged him not to shoot," Montrice Woodard said.
Then the gunman ran outside, jumped into the driver's seat of a silver Honda and fled. There was another man inside the car. It was around 8:30 p.m.
An hour later, when the mother heard her son died at the hospital, she collapsed in the street.
In May, police investigated a tip that drugs were being sold at the victim's home.
"There seemed to be some credibility to the tip," Forseth said, "but not a lot of drugs being moved."
Montrice Woodard denied there were any problems with drugs there.
Long was a junior at Richard L. Sanders School, where students are classified as severely emotionally disturbed. State records show he has had a few run-ins with the law as a juvenile on charges such as disorderly conduct and trespassing.
But Principal Keith Davis said "he was really making some good choices to turn his life around."
The mother wonders what could have been.
"He never really said that he wanted to do anything special," she said. "I think he wanted to stay in the house and take care of his momma and his sister."
Jamal Thalji can be reached at thalji@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8472.
Anyone with information about the shooting was asked to call CrimeStoppers toll-free at 1-877-873-8477.
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Anyone with information about the shooting of Jeremy Lamar Long was asked to call CrimeStoppers toll-free at 1-877-873-8477.
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