Fayetteville Today

Any shooting death leaves mourners, but when a victim is pregnant, it takes the mourning to another level.

Latonya Graham, whose niece, Nakea Brooks, was one of two people slain recently, spoke out about what she called “senseless” violence.

"It’s senseless that people can go around here thinking that they can play God and just take people’s lives,” Graham said in a CBS 17 News report. 

Brooks, 27, and Marchellous Braddy, 33, were found shot to death May 16. Brooks was about two months pregnant.

“We are all just tore up about this,” Graham told CBS 17 News. “It’s very heartbreaking. A senseless death. It’s senseless that people can go around here thinking that they can play God and just take people’s lives.”

Graham told the station her niece had stopped by to visit the father of the baby. A gunman later killed them both.

Police found a car that was linked to the murders and later identified Rhaim Santiago as the suspect. He died Tuesday after police tracked him down, but details about his death have not been released, the News & Observer reported.

Brooks, who was found dead on the lawn at a friend's townhouse on Aftonshire Drive in Fayetteville, is thought to have been trying to flee.

"Nakea was trying to leave whenever she got shot,” Graham told CBS 17 News. “She was scared. She didn’t know what was going on. She tried to run and go to safety, and she was gunned down like an animal.”

Officers have described the murders as not being random, but they haven’t mentioned more details about a possible motive.

Fayetteville is coming off a year that saw a rising number of homicides, CBS 17 News reported, and the neighborhood where Braddy and Brooks were killed is known as a high-crime area.

“This is the ‘hood,” neighbor Cassandra Minor told CBS 17 News. “This is a rough neighborhood. The police patrol all the time because of the activities that go on in this neighborhood.”

Brooks also leaves behind a 6-year-old daughter.