Analdo Reaves holds a large photograph of his wife, Veronique “Roni” Reaves during a candlelight vigil honoring her memory on Thursday night at Big Heads Barber Shop in Milledgeville. Someone shot her early last Friday. Her killer still had not been caught as of Friday. The case is jointly being investigated by detectives with the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office and special agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Region 6 Office in Milledgeville.

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — Analdo Reaves says the tragic death of his wife has left him reeling in the worst nightmare of his life.

He said when he learned that he she had been shot and didn’t survive, it was the most difficult phone call he had ever received.

“She was a good person; she didn’t deserve this,” Reaves told The Union-Recorder during an interview Thursday night, as an estimated 200 people gathered to remember Veronique “Roni” Reaves at a candlelight vigil held at Big Heads Barber Shop in Milledgeville. “She was my angel.”

Analdo said the last several days for him had been like a nightmare.

He said being told she didn’t make it was the most difficult thing he has ever had to deal with in his life.

“You never want to hear those words, man,” Analdo said.

He pointed out that he would never forget them.

“It’s a nightmare that won’t stop,” Analdo said, noting that it was hurtful because of all the hate that it took to do what somebody did to his wife. “We were just a young family trying to make it. It’s hurtful to know that the person you say you’re going to love forever is gone. It hurts. Nothing could ever replace that. That’s the whole gist of it, you know.”

Analdo said he was going to miss many, many things about his wife.

“But mostly, I’m just going to miss her being my side through thick and then and us taking care of the kids,” he said, as tears flowed down his face. “

Analdo said it was hard for him to put into words what he and other members of the family on both sides are presently going through.

“There’s nothing that can describe the feelings that I know all of us are sharing right now.”

He added that his wife’s murder wasn’t just hurting to the families on both sides, but it had been hurtful to the community, too.

“Our whole community lost a good person,” Analdo said. “She was a good mother, a good hairstylist, a good teacher.”

He described his wife as a fun-loving educated black woman.

“She didn’t have no issues with no one,” Analdo said. “For her to be took this way; to go anyway is hard, but to go like this, it just hurts. It just hurts.”

The couple had been involved in a relationship for 17 years, but only married for five years with two daughters, the youngest, 3, and their oldest, 14, a freshman at Baldwin High School who plays on the girl’s softball team.

Analdo said his baby daughter was still having to deal with her mother no longer able to be pick her up in the afternoons.

His voice cracking with emotion, Analdo said he now has to raise two young daughters without his wife and their mother.

“We’re hurting and so is everybody in this community,” he said.

“It felt like we was married 17 years,” said Analdo, who worked as a barber, while his wife was a hairstylist at the same shop and taught GED classes at the Milledgeville campus of Central Georgia Techical College. “This hurts so bad.”

Veronique, whom family members and friends called Roni, was shot and later died while driving home from work at the barber shop early last Friday, according to Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office Detective Thomas “T.J.” Hargrove, the lead detective, in what authorities have said was a murder.

No one had been arrested in connection with the case, which now is a little more than a week old.

Detectives and special agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Region 6 Office in Milledgeville are actively pursuing leads in hopes of developing the name of a suspect along with a motive.

Analdo said he had been kept abreast of developments in the case and that he last spoke to Detective Chuck Downing about what local and state authorities are doing to help solve his wife’s murder.

He said he couldn’t think of anyone who would have wanted to harm his wife.

“She didn’t have any enemies,” Analdo lamented, holding up a large photograph of his slain wife. 

Analdo said he has cooperated with authorities during the course of their investigation into his wife’s murder, but he has retained a pair of prominent criminal defense attorneys — Adrian Patrick, of Atlanta, and Cedric Davis, of Milledgeville — to represent him, the newspaper learned. Authorities have not mentioned that he is regarded as a suspect or that he is considered a person of interest in the shooting death, according to attorneys now hired to represent him.

“Anytime there is a crime where a spouse is killed, the other spouse is always looked at first,” Patrick said at the candlelight vigil. “So in this case, because of that, my client has been questioned already. He is totally innocent.”

Patrick also said that he has advised his client to make no further statements to authorities.

“He is following my advice not to make any more statements right now until we find out more information about this particular murder,” Patrick said. “I think this murder case is deeper than what the investigators have seen upfront.”

Patrick said he wants to secure the 911 tapes of the conversations that Roni Reaves had with emergency dispatchers in both Putnam and Baldwin counties after she was shot and called for help on her cellphone.

“I want to listen to those 911 calls, not to be evasive, but to be fair to my client, the family and the public,” Patrick said, noting he would likely make additional statements after he has heard the 911 tapes.

Analdo said he now wants justice for Roni.

“Everybody wants justice for Roni,” he said. “And we want answers.”