Jailyn Honora can't fully process the fact that her mother is gone.
Honora can still see her mother walking into a room. It's an image she clings to after her mother was killed on August 23rd of this year.
A stray bullet from a drive-by shooting went through a window and killed 50-year-old Veronique Allen. It happened near noon time. Allen was getting her hair done inside a home in the 1400 block of Main Street in the small town of Bogalusa.
"I was standing right behind her when the shooting happened, and my one-year-old son was standing by her feet. Everything just went blank. I was trying to protect my baby and trying to protect myself and trying to make sure everybody else was OK," said Honora.
When Honora was able to get a sense of what happened, she realized her mother had been shot in the head. Bogalusa Police investigators say Allen was an innocent bystander. They believe someone else in the home was the intended target.
Allen's killing is among an unusually high number of homicides for the rural city in Louisiana. Data from the CDC and FBI indicate homicides in other rural cities like Eunice and Opelousas have increased significantly since the pandemic. For example, there were 16 homicides in St. Landry Parish in 2020, more than double what it saw five years earlier.
In Bogalusa this year, there have been more murders in a span of a few months than there were in the entire previous year. I traveled to Bogalusa to get a sense of why deadly violence is increasing in a place that is often described as "close knit." I discovered that characteristics which can make small towns seem charming and safe, may actually be working against police as they try to solve a growing number of murders.
Listen to my story in the player above.