It is the horrifying back-story to the shooting death of a young Georgia mom outside a daycare center in DeKalb County while her baby was in her arms, the back-story that her grieving family told ALIVE11 with frustration and anger.
The young mom’s estranged boyfriend — a serial abuser, they say — is now, once again, in jail, but this time he is charged with murdering her.
The family of 21-year-old Mic’Keya Montgomery said Thursday that her toddler, Chloe, was her greatest joy, while Choe’s father was her greatest fear.
“And had they locked him up and put him away, she would probably still be here,” said Mic’Keya’s sister, Chancierra Coleman.
Coleman described what she’s learned about Mic’Keya’s last moments of life Wednesday afternoon, how Mic’Keya’s estranged boyfriend, Chloe’s father, 22-year-old Taco Nash, violated a protective order and confronted Mic’Keya at Chloe’s daycare center off of Panola Road and I-20 in DeKalb County.
Then, as witnesses and police have told Coleman, Nash drew a gun and forced Mic’Keya and Chloe outside, and pulled them into some woods in back, then shot and killed Mic’Keya.
“He called my other sister and he said,’ I’m sorry, I killed her,’” Coleman said, and police told her later that Chloe had been in Mic’Keya’s arms when Nash shot Mic’Keya.
DeKalb County Police arrested Nash soon after.
Coleman said Nash’s record of abusing Mic’Keya for the past two years includes shooting her once before, in August, 2020, when Mic’Keya was pregnant with Chloe.
“Yeah, he stood over her and shot her,” but he got out of jail after that, Coleman said.
Coleman said Mic’Keya repeatedly tried to leave Nash, Nash repeatedly abused her and threatened her family, and the courts in Fulton and DeKalb Counties repeatedly released Nash from jail.
“He just wouldn’t let go,” Coleman said.
He was wearing an ankle monitor Wednesday afternoon, but Coleman said as far as she knows, no one responsible for tracking him reacted when the monitor would have shown he was at the daycare center violating the protective order.
Mic’Keya and Chloe had moved in with her aunt, Jasmine Walters, hoping to hide from Nash, but he still found her, assaulting her again in recent weeks, and they called police again and again.
“I told them, ‘he has a gun, he’s on an ankle monitor, he’s on probation,’ and they didn’t do anything to protect her,” Walters said. “Flabbergasting to the entire family that they kept allowing him to keep getting out. The justice system completely failed her.”
They described Mic’Keya as sweet, full of life, a great mother, working every day at a job in Midtown Atlanta, taking great care of Chloe, beginning to build a life for the two of them, and enjoying being with their large and close-knit family.
Mic’Keya’s worst premonition and fears, and theirs, they said, came true.
“Obviously, he (Nash) was a menace,” Coleman said, “having, repeated times, being locked up for the same things. I just hope that they (the people responsible for releasing him) are held accountable. They didn’t do their job, which is to protect and to serve.”
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