The mysterious death of Tamla Horsford

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Today we’re stepping back to 2018 when a 911 call came through the Forsyth County Georgia 911 Center at 8:59 am on Sunday, November 4, 2018. The female caller told the dispatcher that she’d hosted an adult sleep over party the night before. When they got up that morning, they found one of their guests lying face-down & unresponsive in the back yard of her home at 4450 Woodlet Court in Cumming, Georgia.

When the first officer arrived at 9:07 am, he sadly determined that 40-year-old wife & mother of five, Tamla Horsford, was deceased.

Although Tamla’s death was ultimately ruled an accidental fall from a second-story deck that caused multiple blunt force injuries as a result of acute ethanol intoxication, from the beginning her loved ones believed otherwise. They have been outspoken about their beliefs that authorities hadn’t properly handled the investigation & they remain convinced that someone murdered her.

Tamla “Tam” Ayana Horsford was born in the Caribbean on October 10, 1978 in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, a volcanic island situated between Saint Lucia & Grenada. In 1989, when she was 11-years-old, her family immigrated to the Bronx & as an adult, she relocated to Florida. Here, she met her husband, Leander “Lee” Horsford, who had a young daughter from a previous relationship & Tamla raised her as if she was her own child.

After the couple had five boys together, Tamla became a stay-at-home mom. According to her friends & family, she was an absolutely devoted mom who was actively involved in her children’s lives, always cheering on the sideline of their sporting events.

At the time of her death, her boys ranged in age from 4-14 years-old while her step-daughter, who lived in Florida, was expecting their first grandchild. Wherever Tamla was, fun would be found as she was the life of every party & just an incredibly positive, lively person.

After Leander accepted a job 39 miles northeast of Atlanta in Cumming, Georgia, the family relocated to the area sometime around 2013, 5 ½ years before her death. Although Cumming is a quintessential small southern town where neighbors know one another, Forsyth County has a known deeply rooted history in animosity toward Black people.

In 1912, the county forced out all of its Black residents in what was known as a racial cleansing & as recently as 1990, there were only 14 Black residents in a population of 44,083 in the entire county. Even to this day, the African American population makes up only 4-5% of the total population.

On Saturday night, November 3, 2018, Tamla headed over to Jeanne Meyers’ house, a friend she’d known since August. Jeanne was celebrating her 45th birthday so she decided to host a group of moms, many of whom knew one another through a local youth football league. Since drinking would be involved, she decided to make it a pajama party sleepover. The home where she lived on Woodlet Court had a finished basement with a door that led out to the ground-level patio, a main-level that had access to an elevated back porch as well as to an attached garage & a second-story.

The party started at 7 pm, but since Tamla made her family dinner & wanted to make sure her kids were situated before she left, she arrived at 8 pm. Although the party was intended to be a women’s only event, Jeanne’s boyfriend who was 18 years her junior, 27-year-old Jose Barrera, decided to come over at the last minute.

Jose had initially planned on going out with Tom Smith, the husband of Stacy Smith, who planned Jeanne’s party. However, he later told investigators that since his stomach wasn’t feeling well that night & he didn’t feel like spending money, he decided to invite Tom over to Jeanne’s house instead, assuring her that they would watch the college football games in the finished basement & stay out of the women’s hair. Since Stacy’s sister was having her friends over at his house that night, Tom was happy to go out.

Including Tamla, there were ten women & two men at the party, but Tamla was the only Black person there. Three of the women left & didn’t spend the night. Jeanne’s 63-year-old aunt, who had lived with her since August, also joined in some of the festivities, but had gone to bed after the group had cake. Since her ex-husband had their kids that weekend, Jeanne’s four children weren’t at the house that night.

When Tamla arrived at 8 pm, she had a blue bottle of tequila in hand from Mexico that she intended to gift Jeanne, but Jeanne was very vocal about the fact that she didn’t like tequila. Tamla quickly changed into her white onesie pajamas that were adorned with gray paw prints & she wore black & red socks with a star pattern on them.

Since Tamla was an exceptionally friendly, outgoing person, she wasn’t bothered by the fact that she didn’t know several of the guests at the party & she quickly made her way around the room introducing herself & chatting.

The women mainly hung out in the living room, drinking beer, wine or liquor, watching the LSU-Alabama football game as Jeanne was a huge fan of LSU. Tom & Jose had gone downstairs to the finished basement to watch the games until halftime when they came upstairs to have cake & eat the food that had been put out.

Although Tamla offered her tequila to the others & suggested they do shots, according to their later accounts, other than one or two women taking a single shot, she had been the only one drinking it. She mixed the tequila with either water or Mountain Dew & she also had a shot of Fireball shortly after her arrival.

Being the only regular smoker at the gathering, Tamla was filtering in & out of the house, going out to smoke on the elevated, second-story deck that had stairs leading to the backyard. Much of the time, other women went out with her to chat & keep her company. Jeanne’s yard was enclosed with a six-foot privacy fence with two access points at either side of the house while another patio-area was situated on the ground-level underneath that had access to the finished basement.

Tamla had also smoked marijuana out on the back deck, something that many of the guests later indicated they hadn’t been aware of. Jeanne’s aunt Madeline smoked with her & Stacy also took a hit. According to a later statement made by Jeanne, since Jose worked as a pre-trial officer, he wouldn’t have approved so she asked them to stop.

All of the guests later described that evening to investigators as one that was relaxed, everyone was having a great time & getting along. At some point that night, Tamla FaceTimed her family as well as her daughter in Florida, turning her phone so everyone could see them. The family could see that Tamla was in great spirits & seemed to be having a good time at the party.

During halftime, sometime around 9:30-10 pm, everyone gathered in the kitchen to sing Jeanne happy birthday & to have cake. Since guests Sarah Cockerham & Nichole Lawson had childcare issues, they weren’t able to spend the night & left around 10:30 pm.

At about midnight, guest Jennifer Morrell, who was clearly intoxicated, was put to bed by her friend, Marcy Hardin after she started to have a meltdown about a previous DUI she’d gotten.

Photos & videos that were taken during the night depicted a smiling Tamla alongside the other women. The remaining group played the card game, Cards Against Humanity until about 1 am when everyone began tidying up & getting ready to head to bed.

According to Jeanne, Tamla was having fun & wanted others to stay up with her, but the group was dispersing to their assigned rooms in her 6 bedroom, 3,700 square foot home. The bedrooms were both on the main level as well as the second-story of the home.

Jeanne & Jose headed up to bed at about 1:30 am, now in the early morning hours of Sunday, November 4, 2018. According to Jose, Tamla planned to either sleep in one of Jeanne’s children’s rooms upstairs or on the couch, but there were also questions as to whether she would stay at all since she questioned going home, saying that she felt okay to drive. Since she’d been drinking, Tom & Stacy encouraged her to stay, telling her she could sleep in Jeanne’s son’s room that was just next door to where they were sleeping.

Everyone went to their respective rooms, leaving Tamla & guest Bridget Fuller as the last who were up & awake. Bridget told investigators that because of her anxiety, she decided she wanted to go home to sleep at the last minute, saying she didn’t feel comfortable spending the night since there were guests there that she didn’t know well, Tamla included.

When Bridget texted her husband, Gary, he begrudgingly agreed to pick her up. According to Bridget’s statement, as she was preparing to leave, Tamla was eating a bowl of gumbo when she said that she was going to have a cigarette before heading to bed herself.

During this time, Jose came back downstairs after he realized he’d forgotten his phone charger in the basement. After quickly going down the two flights of stairs to retrieve it, he went straight back to bed.

Bridget said that Tamla walked her to the front door, gave her a hug & shut the front door as she left. However, Bridget’s husband later said that she’d come to the door alone. She was the last person to have seen Tamla alive.

Jeanne’s home was equipped with an Xfinity home security system that sent notifications to her phone, letting her know which doors in the house were open or secure with a timestamp. According to these notifications, the garage door opened & closed at 1:39 am & when it opened again at 1:40 am, there was no notification to indicate it had been closed again. There were later questions about who had gone into the garage & for what reason, but it was chalked up that someone had likely grabbed a bottle of water or gone out to throw the kitchen garbage away.

The front door opened & closed at 1:47 am which was consistent with Bridget leaving. Then the back door opened at 1:49 am & closed at 1:50 am, with the assumption that Tamla had gone out for her last cigarette of the night. The back door last opened seven minutes later at 1:57 am, which was presumably Tamla coming back in from her smoke, but there was no notification to indicate that the door was closed.

Moving forward a little more than two hours, when guest Marcy Hardin left the house at 4:10 am for work, she said that the TV & the lights were still on & the door to the balcony appeared to be closed. After she grabbed her purse, she quickly left the house.

When guest Paula Seals left at 7:45 am, she didn’t recall seeing anything out of the ordinary on her way out.

When Tom & Stacy Smith left at about 8:30 am, Stacy grabbed her cell phone & crockpot & noticed Tamla’s bag & cell phone in the main area. She mentioned to Tom that she was glad that Tamla had spent the night after all since she’d considered going home.

At about 8:45 am, Jeanne’s aunt, Madeline Lombardi, went to brew coffee in the room near the basement door. She said that when she approached the window that faced the backyard, she caught sight of the fuzzy dalmatian pajamas that Tamla had been wearing the night before.

As she looked more closely, she saw that Tamla was lying on her stomach with her hands at her sides not far from the patio in the grass at the base of the elevated deck. She couldn’t recall what direction her face was turned, but she wondered why she was lying there, especially because it was a cold morning.

Madeline said that she stood for a moment to see if Tamla would move, but when she didn’t, she got down on her knees & said a quick prayer & then ran upstairs to find Jeanne & Jose.

When she initially went to the door & knocked, no one answered, but she said she could hear water running. She went back downstairs to take another look at Tamla, but quickly went back up & knocked harder this time. When Jeanne told her to come in, she said she found both Jeanne & Jose in bed asleep. Madeline told her that she needed Jose to come with her because something was wrong with her friend from the islands, explaining that she was lying face down in the backyard.

After they ran downstairs & out onto the upper patio, Jose said he saw an unlit cigarette lying on the deck. He couldn’t recall if the item he ended up picking up & moving to a table was a cigarette, a lighter or both, but he did so before he knew what Madeline was trying to show him.

When he went down the stairs to the yard, he tapped on the back of Tamla’s leg, but she didn’t respond. Because her leg felt stiff when he tapped on it, he knew she was dead so he didn’t try to resuscitate her.

According to MediceneNet, rigor mortis begins within two hours of death & peaks at about twelve hours with muscles usually becoming fully still between 8-12 hours after death. The last entry for the backdoor had been at 1:57 am, about 7 hours before this point.

When Jeanne called 911 at 8:59 am, both she & Jose spoke during the call. Jose told the dispatcher that Tamla was completely facedown in the yard & her body felt stiff. She wasn’t breathing & he was sure she was dead so he made no attempts to start CPR. He mentioned that his girlfriend had cameras overlooking the backyard which would show what happened to Tamla.

Noticing a small cut to her right wrist, his speculations ranged from suicide to her falling from the 2nd story deck, but he admitted that he truly had no idea. He mentioned that Tamla had been going outside to smoke & there was actually an unlit cigarette & lighter out there that matched the brand she smoked. Since he’d met her only one time previously, he only knew her as Tam & wasn’t able to give her full name without Jeanne’s input.

Deputy Cory Miller was the first to arrive at 9:07 am & because he determined that Tamla was deceased, an ambulance was never sent. He instructed everyone to go back inside the house & for Jeanne to call any guest back to the house who’d left.

According to Deputy Miller, Tamla was lying facedown in the grass wearing an animal outfit with one arm underneath her, but he couldn’t recall what position her other arm was in. Her legs were extended straight out with both feet pointing to the right. Her pajamas were mostly clean with a small dirty spot on the right buttocks of the outfit.

According to lead investigator Michael Christian’s report, when he arrived at 10 am, Tamla had been lying almost immediately at the base of the elevated porch. Her right wrist was dislocated as if she’d tried to brace herself from a fall. There were matching wounds to both of her shins, likely from a metal landscaping divider that separated the gravel from the mulch at the edge of the ground-level patio basically immediately under the elevated patio. The divider that was located near her feet stood one inch up from the ground.

A sketch of Tamla’s positioning was made that showed she was lying face down with her head downhill from her body. While her right arm was by her side, her left arm was bent at the elbow & somewhat out from her body.

This sketch differed from Jeanne’s account as to how they had initially found her that morning. As they ran from the house a little before 9 am, she recalls that both of Tamla’s arms had been by her side with her palms facing up, an image she says is burned into her brain since she felt the positioning was so unnatural.

She went on to say that had Tamla fallen, she would have expected her arms to be up as she braced herself. Due to this discrepancy, a deputy later believed that when he took her pulse, he may have moved her left arm. However, many wondered how he could have done so had Tamla’s body been stiff with rigor mortis. Jose denied ever checking Tamla for a pulse.

While photos were taken, the coroner rolled Tamla’s body over so she was lying on her back, a time when he noticed an injury to her right wrist that appeared to be dislocated or fractured. There was a large bump where her wrist met her hand as well as a cut over the bone as if the bone had cut the skin from the inside. Other than this injury as well as the wounds to her shins, Coroner Bowen noted no other obvious signs of injury.

There were later findings of a small abrasion to Tamla’s left wrist as well as some of the fingers on her left hand. Blood was found at the cuff of her right sleeve at the location of her wrist injury as well as to the shin area of her pajama pants.

After Tamla’s body was transported to the GBI Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy, Major Crimes Detectives immediately began a death investigation.

Jeanne called any guests who’d left so they could come back to speak with the deputies. They found Tamla’s belongings behind a sofa in the living room that included her purple overnight bag. When investigators went through her purse, they found a small amount of marijuana as well as rolling papers.

Since Jose had previously worked as a Felony Probation Agent in Forsyth County, investigators were familiar with him. When he was asked about the unlit cigarette he found outside, he said he found it lying on the ground when he ran outside after Madeline & woken them. Before he went down the stairs to check on Tamla, he picked it up & put it on the table of the firepit. Although Madeline had told him that Tamla was lying in the grass, he said that had he known about what he was going to find, he wouldn’t have moved these items.

As Tamla’s bottle of tequila sat in the kitchen, investigators could see that there was only about ⅛ of the bottle left. The group ultimately determined that other than one or two of the girls possibly taking a shot, Tamla had been the only person drinking from the bottle. She’d also taken a shot of Fireball shortly after her arrival. However, each guest told investigators that Tamla hadn’t seemed overly intoxicated. She had been happy, smiling & not at all stumbling about or slurring her words.

Detectives looked at the entry & exit logs from the home’s security system on Jeanne’s phone & although they had to wait for the Medical Examiners reports for the autopsy & toxicology reports, they almost immediately assumed that she had accidentally fallen sometime around 2 am.

According to Lee, when officers came to his house to inform him of his wife’s death, they had absolutely no remorse. Since he’d been using the restroom, his boys answered the door & after he came to the door, each time they asked him if he was Lee, he responded with, what is this pertaining? They went around again until an officer simply blurted out, it’s about your wife, she’s deceased.

Lee immediately wanted to go to Jeanne’s house assuming that his wife must have been involved in a car accident. As officers sat with him on his porch, he was told that it had been an accident & she had tripped over something & fallen into the grass. This immediately made no sense since Lee knew that his wife was someone who could hold her liquor with no issues.

On Monday, November 5, Tamla’s father, Kurt St. Jour & a family friend met with lead detective Michael Christian with a list of questions in hand. After Kurt had been shown photos from Jeanne’s backyard, he voiced his opinion that his daughter’s death seemed suspicious. Christian explained that they were still waiting on the ME’s report, but to him, it seemed that Tamla had likely fallen into the grass after she tripped on a piece of landscape edging since the landscaping edging matched the wounds to her shins.

When Christian voiced this theory to the ME during a phone conversation the following day, the doctor explained that due to the extent of Tamla’s injuries, it would have been impossible that she would have sustained these injuries from a ground-level fall. They discussed the fact that the upper deck was nearly 15 feet off the ground with a railing that stood at 3 feet 1 inch with a railing that had a width of five inches. The autopsy indicated that Tamla was 5’6”.

When authorities spoke with Jeanne’s ex-husband Matt, he was very surprised to hear that someone could have fallen over the railing since he’d specifically built the deck with safety in mind to protect their children.

When investigators spoke with party guest Stacy Smith about two weeks after Tamla’s death, she also expressed doubts that Tamla would have been able to fall from the balcony. After thinking about every scenario she was able to come up with, there wasn’t one she was able to make sense of. Tamla hadn’t been stumbling drunk & she also hadn’t felt sick, but even if she had gotten nauseous & leaned over to vomit, she couldn’t fathom how she could have gone over.

According to the autopsy, Tamla had suffered blunt-force injuries to the head & neck, bleeding between the skull & the scalp in what is known as a subgaleal hemorrhage, there was also bruising to the right side of her head, bleeding in her brain in what is known as a subarachnoid hemorrhage as well as a subdural hemorrhage.

There was a fracture of the 2nd cervical vertebrae of her neck & the right ventricle of her heart was lacerated, something that is often seen in a victim after a car accident. Her right wrist was dislocated & there were lacerations & abrasions on her upper & lower extremities. There were no fractures to any of her facial bones & none of her teeth were broken.

According to the toxicology report, there was a low-dose of THC as well as Xanax found in her system while her blood alcohol level was 0.238%, just about three times the legal limit to drive. According to the Cleveland Clinic, with a blood alcohol level this high, one could experience confusion, nausea, vomiting and/or drowsiness depending on a person’s level of tolerance & how often they consume alcohol. During the investigation, statements had been made that Tamla did have a higher tolerance than the other women.

A very confusing aspect of this case is how the Xanax came to be in her system as Tamla hadn’t been prescribed it, she wasn’t known to ever take it & no one at the party admitted to giving her any or seeing her take it.

To add to the family’s pain, when they were getting ready for Tamla’s funeral, Lee went in to view his wife’s body before the children & he was appalled at what he saw. He likened the makeup used on his wife’s face as shoe polish as the makeup used to conceal her facial injuries were many, many shades darker than Tamla’s true skin tone. According to Lee, she had been made to look like Blackface which is theatrical practice where non-Black performers used makeup such as burnt cork or shoe polish to darken their skin & mimic Black people, perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

Jeanne’s mother ended up paying for both Tamla’s funeral as well as flying her family into Georgia from Texas which allowed money raised in a Go Fund Me to go straight to Tamla’s children.

A little more than a month & a half after Tamla’s death, Jose Barrera was fired from his position with Forsyth County in pre-trial services after he looked up Tamra’s death investigation. He later indicated that he’d done so out of stupid curiosity.

Three months after her death, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office received the final ME’s report on February 6, 2019, ruling Tamla’s death as accidental & consistent with a fall which caused multiple blunt-force injuries. Dr. Jonathan Eisenstat noted that the proximity of Tamla’s body to the base of the porch strongly suggested a fall from the second-story deck. Had she been pushed or jumped, he argues that her body would have landed farther from the structure.

After reviewing the 911 call, holding witness interviews & canvassing the neighborhood for statements, the FSCO reported spending well over 300 hours on the investigation. The case was officially closed a little over 3.5 months after Tamla’s death on February 20, 2019 when the FCSO determined that Tamla’s level of intoxication, paired with the marijuana & Xanax in her system, likely contributed to the fall.

Since Tamla mentioned going out for one last smoke before bed, paired with time stamps from Jeanne’s security system, led them to determine that at about 1:57 pm, Tamla had somehow accidentally fallen to her death.

After the case was closed, the department released the incident report as well as the death investigation to the public. These reports caused only more confusion for the Horsford family. Because guests at the party had maintained that Tamla had not seemed overly intoxicated, they couldn’t understand how she could have possibly fallen over a railing that was over 3 feet high.

They also wondered how in a house full of people, many who had only just gone to bed in rooms that bordered the upper deck, no one had heard Tamla fall to her death.

They also questioned if a fall from about fourteen feet could have caused the extent of injuries she suffered with a dislocated wrist, a broken neck, a brain bleed & a torn heart muscle. They wondered if the injuries to her arms were defensive in nature & if an altercation occurred on the deck sometime around 2 am before Tamla either went over the balcony or was positioned in the backyard.

Because police believed her death had been an accident from the beginning, Jeanne’s home was never treated as a crime scene. No evidence was fingerprinted, a sexual assault kit nor fingernail clippings had been collected during the autopsy, the contents of the bottle of tequila Tamla had consumed also wasn’t tested.

During witness statements, most of which were held in Jeanne’s home, individuals weren’t separated, giving them time to potentially get their stories in line. Some witness statements had been held as far as two or more weeks after her death.

Tamla’s loved ones found it uncanny that the only Black woman amongst the group had wound up dead that night. They couldn’t help but wonder that if Tamla had been a white woman, would the investigation have been handled differently? Had a white woman died at a party where the rest of the guests were Black, how would things have been different?

The GBI took only five photos, an unusually low number for a death investigation. Despite Jeanne having a home security system, she said her Arlo cameras that pointed at the backyard hadn’t been charged because her aunt had misplaced the charger.

However, her neighbor, Blake Herring, claimed that Jeanne had told him conflicting information, saying that she had video evidence that proved Tamla had fallen. Jeanne denied this, saying she only told him that she wished that her cameras had been working.

Although officers had asked guests for photos & videos that had been taken during the party, none of their devices were taken for data downloads nor were there phone records subpoenaed. By the time the GBI later got involved to do this, at least two people had new devices while older text messages & photos from the timeframe of the party were gone from some of the other devices.

There were also concerns about the fact that around the time of Tamla’s funeral, Jeanne brought investigators Dunkin Donuts gift cards while Madeline made them cookies, something that seemed questionable in the midst of a death investigation.

When investigators spoke with Kim Ruiz, who had been dating the original lead detective, Mike Christian, she indicated that during the time of Tamla’s death & the subsequent investigation, he had sent her Snapchat messages that had been in poor taste, never referring to Tamla by name, only as porch lady.

Kim accused him of lacking empathy for her death & for immediately jumping to the conclusion that her death had been an accident. He was also accused of making derogatory racial remarks which he later argued had been taken out of context.

Mike Christian ultimately lost his certification to work as a police officer as several women came forward, accusing him of sharing confidential information as well as crime scene photos about this case as well as others.

The officers who responded to the scene also had connections with some of the party goers. Mike Christian knew Jose from the gym & according to body cam audio, as one of the deputies walked through the house, he mentioned Jose, saying they had some mutual friends, he’d known him for a while & they were friends.

While another woman from the party expressed concern that she would be late for work, a deputy said, I’m sure you’re good because your boss is my wife!

As investigators tried to determine how Xanas had gotten into Tamla’s system, the GBI caught party guest Bridget Fuller in a lie. As a reminder, Bridget was the last person to have seen Tamla alive before her husband picked her up at 1:47 am.

During a recorded phone conversation with an investigator, Bridget, who had been diagnosed with severe anxiety & even wore a necklace with Xanax in it, said that she never gave anything to anyone because she needs her drugs. She also said that the medication she takes makes it impossible for her to lie. In another statement, she said that because she knows Xanax is a controlled substance, she would never have shared it with anyone.

However, when detectives looked through her text messages after the GBI subpoenaed her device, they learned she’d shared her Xanax at least twice, once before the party & once on the day of Tamla’s death. When caught in the lie, she insisted that she only gave it to the other two women because she knew them well.

During her recorded phone conversation, Bridget said that she hadn’t felt comfortable at the party, saying that Tamla wasn’t aware of personal boundaries. Despite the fact that she didn’t know Tamla, she said that during the party, while she was minding her own business, working on her computer at the end of the couch, Tamla climbed on her, straddling her body, grabbing her boobs. She also said, I don’t do strange people well.

In 2019, Tamla’s family commissioned an independent autopsy which was performed by a private forensic pathologist, Dr. Adel Shaker. Because of the passage of time paired with the fact that Tamla’s organs had been dissected during the initial autopsy, Dr. Shaker was unable to determine a precise cause of death.

Although the initial autopsy described Tamla’s wrist injury as a dislocation, Dr. Shaker said that it was actually a compound fracture of the forearm where a bone could be seen protruding near her right wrist. He also noted an absence of a hematoma or hemorrhaging around the fracture which suggested the injury occurred peri or postmortem, meaning at the time of or after her death.

In response to these findings, the doctors who were involved in Tamla’s initial autopsy indicated that there had been blood around the fracture, but she hadn’t survived long enough for a hematoma to form.

The fact that Tamla’s bone was sticking out near her right wrist was significant to Dr. Shaker since very little blood was found at this scene which raised questions about where the injury occurred. The little blood that was found on the sleeve of her pajamas was on the opposite side of her injury. He also believes that the cut on her wrist happened after her death.

Although the GBI listed a fracture at her cervical spine, Dr. Shaker said it wasn’t a fracture at all. Most damning, the absence of bruising & broken bones in her skull made him question if she’d fallen from the second-story balcony.

Dr. Andrew Koopmeiners attributed her lack of scalp injuries to Tamla falling onto a grassy surface. He described the lacerations & abrasions to her arm as minor & there was no way of telling if they were from her fall or if they’d occurred prior to the fall.

According to police, from the get-go, Tamla’s family hadn’t trusted them & there had been confusion from the start after deputy Mike Christian theorized that she may have tripped & fallen over the landscaping divider on the ground level rather than fallen from the second-story deck. In hindsight, Mike Christian agreed that he should not have hypothesized with the family so early on before they had the results from the medical examiner.

The FCSO & the GBI couldn’t be convinced to take a closer look at the case until the Black Lives Matter movement reignited interest in Tamla’s case on social media. Celebrities & influencers began to sign & share a Change.org petition for the case to be re-examined, resulting in nearly 750,000 signatures.

Ralph Fernandez, a Tampa lawyer who represented the Horsford family, released a letter summarizing his own findings based on his review of the evidence. He feels that homicide is a strong possibility, pointing out the abrasions to Tamla’s arms & hands that could potentially be defensive wounds. He also highlighted conflicting witness statements & issues with the way the investigation was handled, such as not immediately preserving the scene as well as the lack of standard autopsy photos.

With this, the case was reopened on June 18, 2020. Tamla’s family worried that without an independent investigation, they couldn’t trust that an unbiased investigation would be done.

In June 2021, the GBI’s review which included a review by the DA, determined that the facts & investigative findings do not support pursuit & prosecution of criminal charges. Tamla’s case remains closed despite ongoing questions from her family.

Michelle Graves, Tamla’s close friend, has spent years picking apart her friend’s death investigation. She’s gone on to file open records requests, she’s hounded investigators with emails & questions, challenging the credibility of those who Tamla had spent her last moments with.

Those that love Tamla feel that even if her death had been an accident, there is likely more to the story. They continue to hope & pray that those who know what really went on will have the courage to speak up.

When Tamla left her home on that Saturday night in November 2018, she expected nothing more than laughter, good times & a break in her routine from everyday life as being a mom to four young boys. It’s impossible to look at the smiling photos of Tamla from the night of the party, knowing that only hours later her life would be over. She would never walk back into the home that she shared with her husband & her children. They would never again be able to run into their mother’s arms for comfort.

What happened on the night of her death has been debated ever since, by experts, the media & most importantly, those who knew & loved her. Her family continues to push for answers, not because they refuse to accept the truth, but because they can’t understand how Tamla died that night.

Anyone with tips is asked to contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-597-TIPS (8477).

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