DALLAS, Texas — The mother of a 19-year-old killed in Dallas last Monday afternoon says she wants the man charged with her daughter's murder 'to pay' for senselessly stealing her baby girl.
Family members of the teen, Savannah Rodriguez, are now working to raise money for her funeral, which is Thursday at the Jeter and Son Funeral Home in Dallas.
Jeremiah Moore, 27, now faces a charge of murder and three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
He's now in the Dallas County Jail after being arrested in Donley County -- a statewide effort to get him in custody after police say Moore shot and killed Rodriguez as she simply got up to answer the door of her family's apartment unit on Lyons and Elsie Faye Heggins Street.
Per Moore's arrest documents, the 27-year-old knocked on the door, and Rodriguez's grandmother Minerva looked through the window at him to see who it was.
When Rodriguez got up to open the door, Moore shot multiple times through it -- striking Rodriguez, Minerva and Rodriguez's fiance, Chris Morales.
Her family says that Rodriguez was killed almost instantly, while Minerva and Morales were wounded and needed hospitalization. Minerva has been released from the hospital, while Morales has been downgraded from the ICU.
After the shooting, Moore fled the area in a car and went to a nearby car wash, where he shot and injured another man hanging out with a group of people sitting in the parking lot, then left that scene, per the arrest documents.
After Moore's arrest, he was transported back to Dallas County over the weekend.
Rodriguez's mother, Candy Chavez, spoke to WFAA Tuesday alongside Rodriguez's sister Karma. The pair thumbed through photographs taken of Rodriguez throughout her life.
Many will be shown to family and friends at Rodriguez's visitation on Wednesday.
"I'll be by myself now, thinking about her," Chavez said. "I just want some justice. I want him to pay for what he did. We didn't know him -- Why was he knocking on our door? All we did was try to care for my kids and be safe."
Chavez hit a large part of the investigation that detectives are still trying to understand. After the shooting, Moore's motive remains unclear per police.
According to his arrest documents, he's a tenant at the complex and was seen by witnesses acting erratically and threatening to shoot individuals he believed were messing with his wife.
Rodriguez's family says they noticed the two but never said anything to them -- nothing that would warrant a tragedy like this.
"Now I can't have my daughter to be there with me growing," Chavez said. "I want him to pay."
Rodriguez recently graduated from Lincoln High School alongside Morales. The pair planned to marry later this year, with Morales seeking to join the U.S. Army.
"She wanted to go to college for photography. And when I found that out, I wanted to do the same," Karma said. "We liked cameras and just capturing moments. She was my best friend, my number one. Now that I've lost her, I feel like it will be harder because I have to move on without her. I know she'll be watching and with me, but we were so close."
Karma is only 16 and a junior in high school. She was upstairs in the same apartment unit where Rodriguez was shot. She had to exit the unit and see her sister lifeless on the ground.
"I opened the door and heard my mom screaming that my grandma had been shot. I didn't hear my sister, and I didn't see her moving. I had to see my big sister right there on the floor," Karma said.
Karma and Candy are pushing for the harshest sentence for Moore. All the while, they say they're trying to be joyous by focusing on what a light Rodriguez was and how she'd want them to be happy.
"All this is just unbelievable to me, but I'm going to try and be strong for her," Karma said.