Mother of 14-year-old fatally shot in head calls shooters cowards

Mother of teen fatally shot in head speaks out

A 14-year-old girl was fatally shot in the head at a Northeast Austin apartment complex. The teen's mother is calling the shooters 'cowards.'

AUSTIN, Texas - The mother of a 14-year-old girl who was fatally shot in the head early Tuesday morning is speaking out. She calls the shooters ‘cowards’ for killing her daughter.

Mikalah Franklin’s mother said she already didn’t feel safe in the apartment complex and now after losing her daughter, she needs to get out.

"Her name is Mikalah, her name is Kalah for everybody else. The whole complex knows her, everyone loves her, she was funny, really, really goofy, loving, and very protective over her siblings," Mikalah Franklin’s mother Teshina Guajardo said.

On June 6, Mikalah protected her five-year-old brother.

"She was grabbing him and trying to get him to safety," Guajardo said.

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Mikalah Franklin pictured with her younger brother.

Guajardo said Mikalah and her three siblings had just stepped out of the apartment complex to sit on the back of her truck.

"I saw a black car pull in, and they just started letting shots off," Mikalah Franklin’s younger sister Tekiara Franklin said.

"I heard like a lot of gun shots go off, like they weren’t stopping," Guajardo said.

So Mikalah’s mother raced downstairs.

"They were still shooting at the time, but I wasn’t thinking about that, I just wanted to get them," Guajardo said.

Guajardo said she originally thought her five-year-old son was shot.

"My youngest had blood all over him," Guajardo said.

Teen shot, killed at Northeast Austin apartment complex

Residents say the shooting is the latest in a long-running problem of violent incidents at the complex. And they want help, now.

But it was his sister’s blood. Mikalah was found lying in the back of the truck.

"I just keep having flashbacks of how I see my sister on the truck lifeless, fighting for her life," Tekiara Franklin said.

Guajardo said after a long wait, police and EMS arrived and took Mikalah to the hospital.

"I knew they were going to tell me she wasn’t going to make it, and they said that she was brain-dead, and they said ‘do you want to see her’ and I was like, ‘no I want to go home.’ There’s no reason to stay up here if my sister is not coming home with me," Mikalah’s older sister Alena Franklin said.

They all miss Mikalah.

"She can’t tell me that she loves me, like no," Alena Franklin said.

Child hospitalized after shooting at NE Austin apartment complex

Police say a girl was taken to a hospital after a shooting at a northeast Austin apartment complex.

"I got to deal with not waking up with her no more, no seeing her smile," Tekiara Franklin said.

"How can you sleep when you close your eyes you see your baby," Guajardo said.

Mikalah’s mother called the shooters cowards.

"A coward is going to shoot up an apartment complex instead of whoever it is you’re obviously afraid of, going to them, it’s coward," Guajardo said.

Guajardo said she hears gunshots at the complex almost every day.

"Two days before this I had just reached out, I had just moved in, and I wanted to get out of my lease, I was telling her I didn’t feel safe, my children aren’t safe to go outside and low and behold, two days later," Guajardo said.

She said management at the apartment complex hasn’t contacted her after this incident.

A GoFundMe page has been created to help the family.

Anyone with any information should contact APD's Homicide unit at 512-974-TIPS. You may submit your tip anonymously through the Capital Area Crime Stoppers Program by visiting austincrimestoppers.org or calling 512-472-8477. A reward of up to $1,000 may be available for any information that leads to an arrest.