After surviving foster care, Toni was murdered while in college

Sinclair students to memorialize giving spirit
McCarty, Mary. Dayton Daily News, March 27, 2007, pg. A4.

Toni Hollingsworth's friends at Sinclair Community College want people to know she was more than a murder victim.She was more, even, than a Dayton Job Corps Center participant and Sinclair Community College student, although those accomplishments spoke to the woman she was on the verge of becoming.

"Toni was a young lady who got great satisfaction from helping people, especially children," says her friend and Sinclair classmate Charles Hammond of Dayton.

Antoinette Hollingsworth was on track to obtain her associate's degree from Sinclair in June 2006, and she planned to enroll at Wright State University to pursue a bachelor degree in education.

But she was shot in the forehead in an alley in the 800 block of Burwood Avenue after leaving the Family Dollar Store on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 27, 2005. In 24-year-old Reginald Tucker's murder trial last month, a witness described her last words to her assailants: "Take what you want, just leave me alone."

More than most of us, perhaps, Hollingsworth understood that her true value lay not in anything that she owned but on what she carried inside her. The Toledo native had been raised by a great-grandmother after her own mother attempted to shoot her father. After the great-grandmother died, she was raised by foster parents.

"I was so impressed with her, because I never heard her bad-mouth any of her past experiences, or speak ill of her family," said Susan Redmond, academic adviser for Sinclair's student support services program. "She didn't act like she had been victimized by society."

Hammond, 54, became something of a father figure to the 22-year-old woman he met in the math lab when both were struggling with the subject. He works full time in information technology for the Defense Logistics Agency while studying criminal justice at Sinclair. "I was ready to drop the class, but then she tutored me," Hammond recalls.

Hammond will never forget the moment when a fellow student called to tell him about the shooting: "I sat in my car in my driveway for hours, thinking how and why could this happen?" It's impossible for Hammond to comprehend — how all that vivacity could be silenced in an instant by two men she had never met.

Tucker, who was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to life in prison, had been released from prison five months before Hollingsworth's death after serving five years on a rape conviction. A second co-defendant, 17-yearold Sean Rutledge, pleaded guilty March 16 to involuntary manslaughter and aggravated robbery, and is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.

While her death demands justice, her life deserves to be celebrated. "Here was somebody who was putting the past behind them, not blaming anybody, but just grabbing what she could and going with it," Redmond said.

That's why Hollingsworth's friends are raising funds to commemorate her with a brick at the memorial park on the Sinclair campus. Sculptor and quilter Roxie Fambro, another Sinclair student, is donating a quilted doll to be raffled for the cause.

The park is called "Pathways to Learning."

What a fitting name for a tribute to Toni Hollingsworth.