CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – “I’m going to need some counseling, I can assure you of that,” Shequita Jones said with a nervous titter. “Just my garage door opening is a trigger.”
She spoke on a quiet morning in the Sugartree subdivision off of Needmore Road. The sky appeared bluer than normal, and a light breeze drifted through the sun-drenched trees on Hedge Apple Drive.
The morning stood in stark contrast to the dark violence that unfolded just four days earlier, on May 8, when 53-year-old Jones was shot in the leg. Her ex-boyfriend, 54-year-old Adonis Traughber, had shot her, and when police arrived, he turned the gun on them. Traughber was shot by police and died on the porch.
“It’s like I tell everybody: Physically, I will heal but mentally I am scarred for life. God knows I just did not even see this coming,” Jones said.
The incident has left Jones with endless questions about what she could have done differently, psychoanalyzing every second of the weeks leading up to Traughber’s death. As she spoke with Clarksville Now, it was clear she was searching for answers about his mental health.
“Adonis snapped.”
Rising outbursts, substance abuse
Jones and Traughber met in the seventh grade, and they attended Burt High School together. Jones moved away to the New York City area, then moved back 15 years ago and bought her house on Hedge Apple Drive. She reconnected with Traughber three years ago, and a few months later, he moved in with Jones.
They had been together until about two weeks before the shooting.
“I can’t even discredit him. Adonis was a good person with a good heart and good intentions,” Jones said. “Any couple agrees to disagree, but we didn’t even have ugly arguments. He was so attentive and such a loving companion. He was so giving.”
He had admitted to her that he had been jailed and placed on probation on assault charges over 15 years ago, but she said he was never aggressive or violent with her. These qualities make it all the much harder for Jones to swallow the events that occurred on Saturday night.
“Had you told me Adonis did this, I would have argued you down and disputed it,” Jones said.
But over the last several months, Traughber’s behavior changed. Jones noticed irrational outbursts, and his substance abuse worsened. Jones said she became uncomfortable with Traughber’s drinking habits, and he was taking some sort of prescription medications. He had recently been to Centerstone, a mental healthcare facility, to get help.
“He knew if he had something, if he was under the influence of something, he knew not to come around me, my kids or my grandkids,” Jones said.
Jones and Traughber worked opposite shifts, so they hardly saw each other. He was employed at the LG Electronics plant, according to Jones.
The breakup and threats
Two weeks before the shooting, Jones broke up with Traughber.
“I had told Adonis I had felt a detachment and that I had no longer wanted to be in a relationship because of his drinking and whatever other dependency he had,” Jones said. She said she felt she had been enabling his destructive behavior.
She gave him until May 19 to move out.
The last time she and Traughber interacted, Jones said he was threatening suicide. Traughber had confronted Jones in her garage as she was headed to work. He asked for another chance, and he promised he would seek mental health help.
“He said, ‘When I go there, it will help me. I will go inpatient for two weeks,'” Jones said of the conversation. He promised things would get better.
She responded, and said their relationship was over. She needed to go to work.
“He kept pleading his case, and was like, ‘Well I would just rather die,’ and I said, ‘Adonis, we’re just not going to do this. Please stop it.'”
She said he had a history of making empty threats. But she made him promise he was not going to do anything while she was gone at work, especially considering her daughter and grandchildren were in the house. He gave her his word.
“I immediately backed out of that driveway and called his uncle,” Jones said, adding she asked the uncle to go to the house.
Traughber’s uncle called him, with Centerstone mental healthcare professionals on the line, and he told Traughber he needed to leave Jones’ home.
“Adonis got on the phone and told them that there wasn’t anything wrong, and that he was fine,” Jones said.
This seemed to confirm in Jones’ mind that the threat hadn’t been serious, and that it was just another empty statement.
“I thought we could save Adonis. God knows I wanted to save Adonis.”
What followed was Traughber’s four-day bender in the basement, ending in Saturday’s gunfire.
A 911 call, and then gunfire
During those four days, Jones hadn’t come into contact with Traughber.
“He was in his room, and it wasn’t uncommon because I live upstairs, he lives downstairs and Adonis would drink,” Jones said. “Adonis could get a little obnoxious and belligerent, but he was a foolish drunk. Not ugly, ugly but just silly and talking incessantly. It just drove me nuts.”
That evening, Traughber came upstairs and sat in the split-level home’s dining room area.
Talking to Clarksville Now about the incident, she pointed at the chair he was sitting in, and then she broke down.
“I didn’t even know Adonis was sitting here, waiting for me to come out of my room,” she said tearfully.
Earlier in the night, she had let her two small dogs out, grabbed a bite to eat, and headed to her room to take a shower. She forgot to lock the door, but Traughber knew better than to barge in.
Her daughter texted her while she was in the shower about Traughber’s suspicious behavior. He had gone into Jones’ room twice.
“She said, ‘Mom he doesn’t look right, be careful, Adonis is sitting here strictly in the dark,’ and we know that’s not Adonis,” Jones said of the text.
Traughber waited for Jones to come out of the shower.
“I pulled the curtain, I went to step out to grab the towel,” Jones said. “I got one foot out and Adonis met me face-to-face, and I asked him what he was doing in my room.”
She went to the sink and asked him repeatedly to leave her room. Then, Traughber got on the phone. He called 911 and asked them to send a SWAT team. He said a woman had been shot, and then he opened fire on Jones.
“I ducked one bullet, and he caught me with the second one,” she said, adding that she tried to charge him to disarm him.
She remained in her bedroom, while Traughber went to the front door to meet the police who had already gathered outside. He exchanged gunfire with police, and was struck while standing on the porch.
Moving forward
As Jones sat in her dining room, just steps from her entry way now riddled with bullet holes, pauses in conversation felt deafening. A framed poem, “Footprints in the Sand,” was marred with holes that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had alphabetized.
The morning light fighting its way through the shattered windows now covered in plastic amplified the stillness in Jones’ search for answers.
“This could happen to anyone; no place is exempt. Crime happens. Did I think it would ever happen to me? No,” Jones said.
“I’m not going to minimize it, justify it nor downplay it,” she said. “I think Adonis wanted to hurt me, to scare me, but Adonis had every opportunity to kill me. When he was coming in and out of that room, he could have killed me in that shower and I wouldn’t have even had a clue.”
She added that when Traughber aimed his firearm at her, he did not aim high. He aimed low, around the leg area, where she was struck with the second bullet. Luckily it was a flesh wound, and she was treated and released from the hospital that night.
Jones’ daughter tried to come to her mother’s rescue, but Traughber threatened to kill her as well if she didn’t go back to her room.
“He could have took us both out,” Jones said.
Jones tearfully said her daughter moved out with her children after the incident, saying she could no longer live there. The home Jones had lived in for 15 years suddenly no longer felt like home.
“I wish I had of known he was in this dark place where he didn’t value his life anymore,” Jones said. “We’re scarred for life, but I just hope that this helps someone else in the outcome.”
If you or someone you know is in need of help, call the National Suicide Prevention hotline, 1-800-273-8255. Confidential counselors answer calls 24/7. You can also get resources at Suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
Tavia Smith contributed to this reporting.