CLARKSVILL E, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – It’s been four years since Nanci Dunner-Hardy’s 36-old daughter, TaNesha Hardy, was shot and killed by a childhood friend, Timothy Elijah Ogburn.
Dunner said justice was long overdue.
On May 18, a jury convicted Ogburn of five felonies: one count of first-degree premeditated murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, and two counts of using a firearm during a felony. He is scheduled for sentencing on July 5.
On May 23, 2018, Ogburn, who was seeking revenge for someone shooting up his mother’s home, pulled up on a car and fired 11 rounds from an AK-47 rifle. TaNesha Hardy, who was a passenger, was hit twice and later died from her injuries.
Childhood friends
Dunner said her daughter TaNesha and Ogburn were friends from childhood. She said the two met when her daughter was 16 and Ogburn just 6 years old. “His family lived on the street behind ours,” she said. The two lost track of one another when Ogburn had a run-in with the law, said Dunner.
Dunner said she and her daughter talked on the phone frequently.
“She called me sometime in May 2018 and told me she was with Ogburn,” Dunner said. “She was always calling me telling me about people she ran into that were friends and classmates. She called him ‘Badass,'” Dunner said.
“I said you better get away from that boy,” Dunner said she told her daughter. “I think they had run into each other somewhere in the vicinity where they lived at,” Dunner said, noting it was in the area of Mitchell Street. “I said something about that boy was troublesome, couldn’t she see that?”
Phone calls end in gunfire
Dunner said that one night a few weeks later, her daughter was picked up on an old warrant that she had thought was settled. Dunner said TaNesha called and asked if she could bond her out of jail. “I am in bed,” Dunner said she told her. “I told her I would be there to pick her up in the morning, and she told me she would stay put.”
Dunner said she placed a call to Montgomery County Jail to be sure there was not a 24-hour hold on her daughter and that she would be able to pick her up the following morning.
“She told me she would stay and wait on me,” Dunner said. “She told me she was scared and had a funny feeling something or someone was after her.”
As she went back to bed, around 12:30 a.m., Dunner said her phone rang a second time. Dunner said she asked who it was and got no response, so she hung up. “My phone rang again, and this time something told me to listen,” she said. “I listened to whatever conversation (TaNesha) had going in the back.”
Dunner said she heard a friend of her daughter’s say, “Move over baby.”
“TaNesha said, ‘What are they about to do?'” Dunner said. “I stayed on the phone trying to figure out what was going on.”
Dunner said that was when she heard the first gunshot. “I’m screaming and hollering ‘Who is this?'” Dunner said, recalling that night.
Dunner said she then heard someone ask who was driving. “I ain’t trying to die,” Dunner said she heard the person say.
At that point, more gunshots were fired. Dunner said she left her room and began searching the house for her granddaughter, Alexis. Dunner said she heard the person driving the car ask if everyone was OK. “Then he asked if TaNesha was OK, and there was no answer.”
Where was TaNesha?
Dunner said she lost it. She hung up the phone and called the Montgomery County Jail to learn that her daughter was no longer in custody. “I called 911 and asked if there was a shooting in the area,” she said. After not getting any answers from authorities, Dunner called TaNesha’s father, who gave her the phone number to the house where he knew TaNesha had been hanging out.
“A (woman) answered the phone and told me TaNesha had been shot,” Dunner said. She was told the police were putting up tape around the house. As she drove to the residence on Mitchell Street, Dunner said, she passed a man holding a sign with flashing blue lights on it that said, “Jesus loves you.”
“I am a praying momma, so I started to pray,” she said. “Lord Jesus, please let her be all right until I get there.”
Dunner said she saw an ambulance leaving as she pulled up to the house. “I wanted to stop it and see her, but I let them go; she had to get help.”
She soon learned from an officer at the scene that of the three people in the car during a drive-by shooting, her daughter TaNesha was the only one who was injured.
At the hospital, she was told her daughter was dead.
Lives changed
“She was such a fun, bubbly person. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Dunner said.
Alexis Hardy, TaNesha’s 23-year-old daughter, said she was just 19 when she lost her mother.
She has many questions about why.
“Why do people with prior felonies have access to these weapons anyway?” she said. “How can a three-time offender still get in contact with a handgun?”
She said still feels the loss of her mother after four years. “I feel like when everything happened, I feel like my whole life changed,” Alexis Hardy said.
“TaNesha held us all together.”