LaTaivia Davis: Teacher, 24, Killed in Road Rage Shooting
FORT WORTH — Family, friends, coworkers, and church family filled a sanctuary on Saturday to say goodbye to LaTaivia Davis — a sister, teacher’s aide, friend, and advocate whose warmth, humor, and care reached far beyond any single classroom or pew.
They did not gather only to mourn how she died. They gathered to insist on who she was.
Davis, 24, was remembered as “TT” to the people who knew her best: a young woman who sang in the youth choir, served in children’s ministry, read Scripture when asked, and showed up for outreach. At The Vision Church of Fort Worth, where she had been part of the ministry since she was a toddler and was baptized last September, she had a usual Sunday spot — Bible and notebook in hand. After her death, the church played her favorite prayer songs and held her mother as she cried, “My baby.”
She was also Miss Davis at E. Ray Elementary School in Everman ISD, an Everman graduate who came home to work in the district that raised her. Colleagues said she was kind, joyful, and already preparing for a new school year. Her classroom door was decorated. She was looking forward to the students. District staff remembered her as a creative person who “saw beauty in the world and helped others learn to see it too.” Earlier in the week, balloons rose from the schoolyard in her honor. Students, staff, athletes, and neighbors stood with her family — including her mother, who also works at the school.
On the morning of Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, Davis, 24, was driving to her job as an art teacher’s aide at E. Ray Elementary in Everman ISD. The shooting happened about 6:30–6:40 a.m. on eastbound Interstate 20 in southwest Fort Worth, near Trail Lake Drive / Granbury Road, just past the Hulen Mall area.
Witnesses told Fort Worth police that Davis and another driver became involved in what officers called an apparent road-rage encounter. Police say Patrick Lawrence, 37, pulled up beside Davis’s car, fired at least one shot into her vehicle, and drove away. First responders found Davis in her car and tried to treat her. She was pronounced dead at the scene, about 6:52 a.m. Reports described a gunshot wound to her upper arm, forearm, or torso. The highway was shut down for hours while officers and police cadets searched the roadway. They recovered a shell casing near Granbury Road.
Her sister, Taivion Davis, told mourners that LaTaivia was more than a little sister. “You are also so much more than that. You are a part of me.” The two were a year and a half apart and so alike that people often thought they were twins. They liked to let people believe it. They were inseparable. Taivion said her sister first studied forensic psychology, then found her true work with children. In a letter read earlier at church, she wrote that she wished for one more hug, one more laugh, one more chance to say how much she loved her. “Until we meet again, rest peacefully, my beautiful little sister.” At the funeral she added, “I wish heaven had a phone, just so I could call you.”
Cousin Carl Evans Jr. spoke the sentence many in the room already carried: “You deserved so much time. I’m so sorry you were taken away from us this way. But your life mattered.”
The funeral was held Saturday, Aug. 29, at Samaria Baptist Church in Fort Worth, after the balloon release at E. Ray Elementary. Loved ones described Davis as someone who put others first. A crown was placed on her casket as a last public tribute. The people who loved her said her legacy would not be the highway, the headlines, or the violence that ended her morning commute on Aug. 13. It would be the children she encouraged, the church she served, the sister she matched stride for stride, and the ordinary, luminous fact that she made other people feel seen.
“LaTaivia’s story belongs to the life she lived,” Everman ISD crisis coordinator Angela Johnson said at the school memorial, “the people she loved, the creativity she brought, the students and staff she encouraged and the lives she changed.”
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