GWYNN OAK, Md. — It was November 5th of 2005 when 23-year-old Tiona Smith got off work at McDonald’s in Cockeysville and took a bus into the city, but she would never make it home.
Her mother, Theresa Wooden, has lived with her unsolved murder ever since.
“I’ve been talking to therapists, because I suffer from depression and anxiety,” said Wooden, “It’s very hard. It’s not easy especially when you have another child that you’re worried about, you know?”
Investigators later turned up images of Tiona getting into a white car with three unidentified males that evening at Eutaw and Fayette streets.
“It had to be somebody that she knew. I hope it was somebody that she knew anyway, not some total stranger, to get in the car, but they set her up. I can tell you that,” said Wooden, “That sounds like a set up to me to have three guys in the car and then somebody take her out there to Woodlawn and pass her house to kill her.”
The next morning, children playing basketball here in the 6800 block of Fox Meadow Road in Gwynn Oak would make a gruesome discovery.
They spotted Tiona’s lifeless body behind one of the homes, and it was later learned she had been fatally stabbed.
While the case has long since gone cold, it is not forgotten, and Tiona’s mother holds on to the hope that someone will be held accountable.
“I’m not seeking revenge. I’m seeking justice, because I need to know who killed my daughter,” said Wooden, “My daughter went out here. She was going to college. She was working, doing something for herself and then somebody had the audacity to take a knife and put it into my daughter.”
