The aunt of two Atlanta Falcons stars was killed after a driver plowed into her car while she was waiting for her mom outside a Kroger supermarket during a routine grocery store trip.
Giselle Perry, the aunt of brothers AJ and Avieon Terrell, was parked outside the Decatur, Ga., grocery store when she was struck around 3:20 p.m. Wednesday, WSB-TV reported.
DeKalb County cops said a driver smashed into Perry’s car, which pushed it into a metal pole and others onto the sidewalk. Perry, 49, had been sitting in the driver’s seat.
Tyeisha Wilson, the daughter of the driver who smashed into Perry, said her mom had just left her home before she blacked out while behind the wheel.
“My mom blacked out while she was driving and she didn’t even know what was happening,” she told WSB. She has been left with serious injuries.
Barber Tony Lackey saw a car speed across the parking lot while he was on a smoke break moments before it smashed into Perry’s car.
“We seen and heard the car coming and two seconds later, boom, a loud bang and all of us ran down there and checked it out and it was horrible,” he told Atlanta News First.
“It looked like two of the cars had been in an explosion like the car that she hit was t-boned because it was parked right there and brought all the way to the wall.”
Witness Doderick Moore compared the speeding car to a “missile.”
“The woman came down here like a missile and knocked the car that way,” he said. “She knocked every brick off that pole in one lick.”
A pedestrian walking nearby was also left with serious injuries.
The brothers paid tribute to their aunt.
Avieon, 21, was the No. 48 pick in last month’s NFL Draft and reunited with his brother at the Falcons. He wrote on his Instagram Stories that Perry was one of his biggest supporters.
The cornerback, dubbed Baby Fox, shared a video of himself scoring a touchdown while playing for Westlake High School, where she was seen celebrating wildly on the sidelines.
AJ, 27, joined the Falcons in 2020 and he shared a black and white image of himself with his aunt, captioning it: “I can still hear you.”
AJ and Avieon, who both played college football for the Clemson Tigers, embraced in front of their family when their reunion on the field was announced in touching footage shared by the Falcons two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, Perry’s husband, Laddyan, described her as “great and gorgeous,” and said: “She was everything to me.” They were set to mark their fourth wedding anniversary in June.
“She was loving, caring, she [would] do everything for me,” he told 11Alive, also revealing that seeing her possessions strewn across their home makes him “break down.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
