Slain Montgomery Police officer Tanisha Pughsley changed the world around her

Detective Tanisha Pughsley patrolled the neighborhood surrounding Transformation Montgomery as part of her duties as a Montgomery Police Department officer.

But she quickly became a beloved member of the community. Tanisha Pughsley began volunteering at Transformation Montgomery, helping out with the group's pre-K program.

She served lunches. She was quick with a hug. She became a role model to the children at Transformation Montgomery,

“They could look at her and say 'I could do that,'" Director Debbie Peavy said.

That was all cut short when Tanisha Pughsley, 27, was killed in her home July 6, 2020, by an ex-boyfriend.

Since then Tanisha Pughsley's mother Sharon started a nonprofit named Tookies Voice, after her daughter's nickname. Tookies Voice is designed to help people struggling with domestic violence.

“I really didn’t understand the scope of domestic violence until this happened, and when I started researching domestic violence and you know red flags, and I’m like 'oh my goodness I realize that we all may have experienced domestic violence in one form or fashion and just didn’t realize it was a form of domestic violence,'" Sharon Pughsley said.

Sharon Pughsley emphasized that anyone can become entrapped by domestic violence, even professional people like her daughter.

Tookies Voice

Tookies Voice is designed to help people on the run from their abusers. Sharon Pughsley prepares purses or tote bags filled with hygiene items and clothes. She also helps raise money for domestic violence shelters.

Tanisha Pughsley's family got a measure of justice when Judge J.R. Gaines sentenced her killer, Brandon Deshawn Webster, to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A jury convicted him to first-degree murder.

But that does not bring back their Tookie.

“I am grateful for the verdict, but neither family wins. Neither family wins," Sharon Pughsley said through tears. "The thing is ... he can conversate with his family. He can still write to them.

"... I either have to talk to her picture or go to a gravesite and look at the place where her body remains. I don’t get that anymore. I don’t get the hug. I don’t to say 'I love you' and hear her voice. I just have to remember her as she was and look at text messages or look at videos or things like that.

"... I will never see where her career path took her. I will never see what kind of mom she would have been — if she would have been a mother, if she would have gotten married. All of that was robbed from me. I will never be a grandmother from her kids."

Tanisha Pughsley was a vibrant young woman, friends and family members said. She was loyal and stubborn and kind.

Her close friend Curbie Toles said that Tanisha Pughsley loved her emotional support dog Jay, karaoke and bowling.

She had dreams of being an FBI agent. Four days before she died, she wrote an email to her mother to share that she had made it to the last round of interviews for the FBI, and that her employment was contingent on passing a background check.

Changing the world around her

D’Andre Jenkins credits his sister Tanisha Pughsley with turning his life around. He was in jail when his oldest child was born. His sister told him to remember that feeling and to do better.

Now, Jenkins dedicates his cooking career to Tanisha Pughsley and plans to name his restaurant after her.

Jenkins said he and his mother and sister were a tightknit group and that she always tried to protect him even though she was his little sister.

Jenkins remembers a time that a group of guys showed up threatening him, and Tanisha Pughsley came outside with a bat, determined to keep her brother safe.

“I used to always call her my little, big sister," Jenkins said.

Toles, who lived next door to Tanisha Pughsley in the apartment complex they shared, thought of her as his own sister.

He said they argued a lot but that was just because Tanisha Pughsley was the type of person who was real with him. They could talk about the hard stuff.

Toles worked in corrections for 10 years, but after her death has dedicated himself to his painting, something Tanisha Pughsley always encouraged.

“It’s like having her right there saying 'I told you so,'" Toles said.

'An impact on campus'

Tanisha Pughsley, who is from Chicago, attended Alabama State University on a bowling scholarship, Toles said. Jenkins said she chose it because it is an HBCU.

Keith Ray, an ASU associate professor and chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice and Social Sciences, was one of Pughsley's mentors at the university.

“Students come and go on campus, but it says something when you come through a campus and you leave an impact on campus the way she did," Ray said. "You know because even up until today students that are here now they’ve never even met Tanisha, but they do know about her. They know about what she did and her legacy while she was her on Alabama State’s campus and what she did when she left."

Pughsley graduated from ASU with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and from Auburn University at Montgomery with a master's in public administration.

Pughsley made a difference at ASU and AUM in the same way she made a difference everywhere she went, including Transformation Montgomery.

There, she was more than a police officer. She was a trusted friend.

She showed the kids at Transformation Montgomery what “someone that looks like them” could do, said Dolores Burrell a therapist and adult minister at the nonprofit.

“I always gave the description, you’re beautiful with a badge," Burrell said.

More: Previous Coverage Jury convicts former boyfriend of murdering MPD detective

Alex Gladden is the Montgomery Advertiser's public safety reporter. She can be reached at agladden@gannett.com or on Twitter @gladlyalex.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Community continues to mourn Detective Tanisha Pughsley