The mother of a woman who was fatally shot during a dispute near the Venice Beach Boardwalk last week pleaded for anyone who knows anything about the incident to come forward.
The victim, 28-year-old Ky Thomas, was a mother to an 8-year-old girl and 1-month-old boy. She had recently purchased a home and had received her license to broker loans in commercial trucking, a family friend said during a news conference.
“All those things were taken from her that day on Venice Beach,” Brittney Braddock said, calling the shooting “brazen.”
The incident was reported about 5:25 p.m. Dec. 1 along Ocean Front Walk.
Responding Los Angeles Police Department officers found the victim unconscious and not breathing. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
An investigation revealed there had been a dispute between the victim, her boyfriend and three Black males who were possibly wearing hoodies. The assailants ran away from the scene. No arrests have been made in the incident, LAPD Officer William Cooper told KTLA Wednesday.
“My grandchildren don’t have their mother,” the victim’s mother, Cortlyn Bridges, said, adding her grandchildren won’t have anyone to “hold them through the night when they have nightmares, when they’re sick, holidays.”
She said that her granddaughter recently asked her if someone could text from heaven because she needed help getting into her computer and only her mother knew how.
“How do you explain that to an 8-year-old?” Bridges said. “I can’t pick up the phone and call her, I can’t hug her, and it don’t seem real. It’s like a bad dream.”
Bridges said her daughter had a heart condition, but overcame challenges to provide a better life for her children. She was not a gang member, and was upset over the shooting being described as possibly gang-related.
“My daughter was a good girl, she had a good heart,” Bridges said.
She pleaded with anyone who had information about the shooting to come forward, saying three times “I’m begging you.”
And to the person who shot her daughter, she said, “You took my baby from me … I don’t know how you can sleep at night.”
Anyone with information about the shooting can call LAPD’s West Bureau homicide investigators at 213-382-9470.