Slain mom was protecting daughter
And now, the grandmother says, no justice can bring back what domestic violence took away.
Janet Collins treasures a white fabric flower decorated with her daughter’s photos.
She put on the flower once, pinned to the white dress she wore for her daughter’s funeral this summer.
Now, the blossom featuring her daughter’s beaming face hangs on a bedroom wall.
“She was a beautiful, beautiful woman inside and out,” Collins said.
Her daughter, Sonya Collins, was shot and killed June 26. Prosecutors say she died protecting her daughter — Janet’s granddaughter — from an abusive boyfriend who had a prior conviction for firing a gun after an argument with a previous girlfriend.
“It hurts me because she trusted the wrong people,” Janet said. “That’s why I don’t like lies and secrets, because if there was no deceit, my daughter would be here right now.”
One of Sonya’s daughters was dating 21-year-old Oshonti Cannady and did not tell anyone that the relationship had turned abusive, Janet said.
Cannady, the man accused of killing Sonya, is slated for trial next month. Janet had two children and Sonya is survived by three daughters of her own.
“I love my children,” Janet said. “They’re all I got.”
An argument leads to gunshots
On June 26, Sonya’s daughter was driving to Sonya’s home on the northwest side of Milwaukee. Her son and her friend were in the car, too. According to a criminal complaint: She had a series of phone calls with her boyfriend, Cannady, that grew increasingly volatile.
Her phone was connected via Bluetooth so her friend and son could hear the calls.
Her friend later told police she heard Cannady say: “On my kids, I finna shoot that (expletive) up.” The friend also said Cannady texted her directly, telling her to “get out” of the car, court records show.
The group got to Sonya’s house. Another car pulled up minutes later and a fight began almost immediately between Cannady, his girlfriend and her friend — and Sonya came outside to intervene.
Cannady went back to his vehicle, grabbed a gun and opened fire, shooting Sonya, his girlfriend and her friend.
Sonya, 41, died of a single gunshot wound to the chest.
Less than a week later, Cannady, 21, was charged with first-degree reckless homicide and two counts of first-degree reckless injury, all as a party to the crime. He also faces one misdemeanor charge of bail jumping.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled for a jury trial Nov. 11. His attorney, Matthew Ricci, declined to comment on the case this week.
Fired a gun during earlier incident
Two months before the shooting, Cannady was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor.
Milwaukee police officers saw what they believed to be a drug sale, as a man leaned into the driver’s side window of a car parked more than a foot away from a curb.
Officers approached the man and the driver, identified as Cannady. Both men had guns without a concealed weapon license and were charged.
Cannady appeared in court for a status hearing in that case one day before the homicide.
He also has a prior disorderly conviction after shooting a gun in the air after an argument with his girlfriend at the time.
In June 2016, Milwaukee police got a call for a ShotSpotter alert and went to the 1600 block of West Galena Street. ShotSpotter is a series of sensors in parts of the city that detect and pinpoint the location of gunfire.
Officers saw a man and woman walking in the area and watched as the man ran down quickly into a gangway and then returned, according to a complaint.
Police found spent casings on the sidewalk and in the gangway, they found a backpack with a gun inside. Cannady told police he fired the gun because “he was angry with his girlfriend” and wanted “to let off some steam,” the complaint said.
Cannady pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year of probation.
‘We’ll never get over it’
Sonya’s mother, Janet, said she knows why her daughter intervened in the fight on June 26.
Years ago, Janet and Sonya were in a similar situation during a New Year’s Eve party at Janet’s house. A former boyfriend of Sonya’s pushed his way into a room where Janet and Sonya were talking and threatened to kill her daughter, Janet said.
Janet remembered telling the man he would have to kill her, Sonya and everyone else in the house, because no one would let him flee after hearing gunshots.
“He put that gun back in his pocket, went downstairs, fired it four times in the air and drove off,” Janet said in an interview.
“I remember thinking ‘I’m not going to let you have my child’ and I know that’s how Sonya felt, too,” she said.
Last year, 37 people were killed in Wisconsin in acts of domestic violence, according to a recent report.
Sonya has been remembered as a fun-loving person, a caring driver for a medical transport company and a devoted mother of three daughters and grandmother to three grandchildren.
“We’ll never get over it, but we’ll get through it,” Janet said. “God is God. I still trust him completely.”
Cannady was charged and an arrest warrant issued soon after the shooting. As Janet and her family called for justice and mourned, their story spread across the country. Cannady was arrested two weeks later in July.
“Is there any justice?” Janet said, pausing to reflect on the question.
“No,” she said. “He took something so precious and rare away from her daughters and her grandkids.”