Joanna's mother was gracious enough to talk to us Tuesday afternoon. She is grieving, but wanted us to talk about the extraordinary young woman she says he daughter was.
She says Joanna was shot in the face Tuesday at Greenspoint Mall. Her mother says Joanna was engaged to be married in January, that she was planning a wedding. She told us that while working at the lingerie shop at Greenspoint, she was also going back to school to get her high school diploma.
Norma Jean Gonzalez didn't get a chance to say good bye to her daughter, a fact that further upset her when she heard that the man who police say killed Joanna left this final goodbye on his ex-wife's voicemail.
"Um, so, I'll uh, I guess I'll talk to you later. Well, I won't talk to you later. I'll see you either in heaven or on the earth," said Jason Hawkins on the voice mail. "Tell my family I love 'em, and that I wish, I wish, they would have supported me and stuck by my side on everything I did. And that I always felt like an outcast, and I wish I would have met my real father. Bye."
And I hate it that he was able to make that call, that he could say some last words and she wasn't able to say anything to me," said Norma.
Joanna's middle name was Starr and like a star that shined, her mother says her daughter was a leader who people followed, that out of this darkness, her daughter's love will continue to shine.
A funeral for Gonzales is being planned for Monday.
