Crime & Justice

She Messaged Mom She Was a Hostage. Then She Was Found Shot Dead.

CRY FOR HELP

“They killed my child,” Gail Maddox wrote on Facebook after Mahogany Jackson’s body was discovered.

Mahogany Jackson
Birmingham Police

A young Alabama woman who went missing over the weekend—and reportedly sent her family a message that she was being held hostage—was found shot dead on a roadside early Monday.

Birmingham Police say a passerby spotted the body of Mahogany Jaquise Jackson, 20, and called 911. Jackson’s mother, Gail Maddox, then posted on Facebook: “They killed my child.”

“Our family is devastated with the turn of the last 24 hours. I’m asking that you give my sister... some time to process losing her daughter. This a lot to handle and we are just trying to figure everything out,” Maddox’s sister, Loretta King Hicks, posted.

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“If you would like to do anything, all we are asking for is prayer and for the ones that did this horrible thing to be caught!!!”

Jackson was reported missing Sunday morning after she texted a family member. Police did not provide details of that communication, but Maddox said in a Facebook post that she received a disturbing message from her daughter.

“My Daughter sent a Message this morning @ 7:46 saying that she was being held hostage and she sent her location saying don’t call but send the police in a hurry,” she wrote.

“The person who lives there and some other unknown people have done something to my daughter and will not cooperate.”

Maddox told AL.com that she and police rushed to the address and a woman there said Jackson had left hours earlier.

After Jackson was found dead, her cousin Brittany Maddox expressed her frustration on Facebook: “What hurts the most is u call for help but no one got there in time,” she wrote. “I’m so sorry cousin.”

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