Police search for Douglas County woman wanted in murder

DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ga. — Police are searching for a woman they said shot another woman, ultimately killing her.

One of the victim's friends is a key witness in the case and talked exclusively to Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne Thursday.

Keila Thomas told Winne how she raced in her car to the hospital with her wounded friend Nyla Foster in the back seat.

“I was like driving out of the parking lot to go to the hospital but then I saw a police officer parked on the side of the road,” Thomas said.

Investigators say Foster and Shontori Gooden, both 21, got into an argument in a Lithia Springs parking lot. Gooden then got a gun from her car and shot Foster in the leg.

“I just heard Nyla screaming my name. I jumped out of the car and I saw her on the ground and I saw blood,” Thomas told Winne. “She was like, ‘She shot me, she shot me.’ I asked her where did she get shot at. She was like her leg.”

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“Apparently an argument broke out in a parking lot over a young man, which ultimately resulted in Ms. Gooden shooting Nyla Foster,” Douglas County Sheriff Sgt. Susan Sweat told Winne.

Sweat said investigators are at work trying to find Gooden, who also goes by Tori or Brittany, and arrest her for murder for firing the shot that led to Foster's death

Sweat described Gooden as 5 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 8 inches in height, weighing 160-185 pounds, with hazel eyes, piercings on her face and tattoos on her neck.

“She always carried a smile. And she was an uplifting person,” friend Tashia Smith described Foster.

She said she and Foster moved to Atlanta together from their hometown, Lakeland, Florida, and she and Thomas went on camera to help authorities in their search for Gooden.

“She has to pay for what she did and obviously it would make her family and her friends feel a lot better to see justice had been served,” Smith said.

Anyone with information on this case is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 404-577-8477.

Cox Media Group