Mother, Two Girls Slain in Possible Retaliatory Attack

A shooting Tuesday that claimed the lives of a woman and her two daughters and injured a toddler may have been a retaliatory attack by drug dealers, relatives of the victims said.

Two or more gunmen stood outside the front ground-level bedrooms where the victims were sleeping and fired semiautomatic weapons through the windows, police said.

Two other occupants, the toddler’s mother and great-grandmother, were sleeping in other parts of the apartment and were not injured.

Police identified the murder victims as Laura Taylor, 40, and her daughters, Tomika Jacobs, 14, and Myesha Jacobs, 16. The fourth victim, 2-year-old Tony Redd, was in good condition at Children’s Hospital with a bullet wound in the buttocks.

Relatives of the dead woman said the shooting may have been a retaliation for testimony by Charlotte Barker, 23, against local drug dealers. Barker, the mother of the 2-year-old victim, was was not injured in the shooting.