A Life Ended Too Soon

I didn’t know the woman in the below story, but it really touched a nerve with me. Perhaps Ms. Hampton’s destiny was to help one of the children in the class she taught. It’s a damn shame that a possessive asshole has to ruin what was a promising life. He deserves to rot in jail for that. The last sentence is the one that choked me up. You’ll see if you read the entire article.

Slaying victim taught at alternative school
By ALEX BRANCH
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

FORT WORTH — Latarsha Hampton had promised her students Kool-Aid pickles.

The homemade treat, Hampton told the children, was made by marinating pickles in Kool-Aid overnight.

“She was going to bring them and let us try ’em,” said Breon Patterson, a 14-year-old student at the Middle Level Learning Center. “She was always doing great stuff like that. She really liked us.”

Instead, when students arrived Monday morning at the Fort Worth alternative middle school, they learned their 27-year-old science teacher was dead. Police found her fatally stabbed Saturday in her Benbrook apartment.

They arrested Anthony Davis, 36. Hampton’s mother said her daughter had broken up with Davis months ago.

Relatives said Hampton’s 4-year-old daughter, Tanoah, witnessed the attack.

Principal Terry Bowie announced Hampton’s death to the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at an all-school meeting.

“It was very quiet,” said Denise Isom, a teaching assistant. “She treated the students as if she were their mother. They loved her.”

Hampton had taught at the school for four years. Originally from Louisiana, she moved to Fort Worth after graduating with honors from Southern University in Baton Rouge to study at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

Hampton had wanted to be a doctor since she was young, said her mother, Arlean Hampton, of Lake Providence, La. Born prematurely — she weighed 2 pounds, 1 ounce — Hampton spent the first months of her life in the hospital.

“When she was older, I told her everything the doctors did to help her,” Arlean Hampton said. “She said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ And she was an honors student all through high school and college.”

Her plans changed after she became pregnant. Hampton got her teaching certificate and took a job teaching science at the Learning Center, a school with about 80 students.

It turned out she loved teaching, said Jennifer Masten, a history teacher. Being at an alternative school never fazed her.

“There are some extra challenges here with behavior,” Masten said. “But I hardly ever heard Ms. Hampton even have to raise her voice. She seemed to understand the kids. She looked for success stories, not negatives.”

She told her students all about Tanoah, said Israel Rodriguez, 15. Every Friday night, she took her to McDonald’s or, as Tanoah called it “Old MacDonald’s.”

“It makes everyone real sad to think about her baby now,” Rodriguez said.

Tomesha Thompson, 14, put her feelings into words. On a poster, around a photo of Hampton in the teacher’s lounge, she wrote “RIP Ms. Hampton. It wasn’t time for her to leave.”

Hampton’s death — originally reported by police as a shooting — sparked lively class discussions, math teacher Janet Moyer said. They ranged from talks about gun control to some students’ desire for someone to hurt the man who hurt Ms. Hampton.

“There has been a lot of emotions,” Moyer said.

This year, Hampton decided to return to her first goal: becoming a doctor. She took the medical school admission test and told Bowie that, if accepted to medical school, she would have to leave at the end of the school year.

“It was going to be tough for her,” Bowie said. “She loved teaching. But this was her dream.”

Hampton told her colleagues good-bye Friday afternoon. She was found dead about 12:30 a.m. Saturday.

Davis was found nearby with his wrists slashed, police said. He was treated at a hospital and taken to jail.

Arlean Hampton said her daughter had never expressed fear that she was in danger.

Tanoah is living with her grandmother now. “She’s doing well,” she said. “She says her mama has wings.”

Bowie said that after Hampton’s death, he spoke to her uncle. While sorting through his niece’s things, the uncle had found a recent letter — possibly opened Friday afternoon —from the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center at Dallas.

She had been accepted.
Alex Branch, (817) 390-7689
abranch@star-telegram.com