Family seeks answers after mom slain in Columbus

On Jan 25, 2022

Mileisha Windham didn’t know if she would ever be able to have children.

Prior unexplained health issues, her family said, raised doubts about her ability to become pregnant — until she did. Six years ago, Windham gave birth to the first of her three daughters.

The girls — now ages 2, 4 and 6 — became Windham’s world, her reason for pursuing a higher education while working to provide for them as a single mother, her family said.

“For her it was a fulfillment,” said Windham’s sister, Tashi Windham, 28, “the family she always wanted.”

Windham, 34, and her daughters were nearly inseparable, so it’s no surprise all three girls were with her on the night of Dec. 22, 2021, when tragedy struck. While they were outside of Windham’s apartment on Columbus’ North Side, Windham was shot dead by an unknown assailant.

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A neighbor at the Reserve at Sharon Woods apartment complex on Solera Drive near Sharon Woods Boulevard called 911 at 7:52 p.m., telling the dispatcher that the children had knocked on his door imploring him to help.

“They said their mom is dead,” the man says in the 911 call as the children can be heard inconsolably wailing for their mother in the background. “I don’t know where they belong, I don’t know anything.”

Columbus police and medics rushed to the apartment complex, located north of Route 161 about a mile south of Sharon Woods Metro Park, and pronounced Windham dead at the scene after 8 p.m.

Mileisha Windham: Family in Mansfield devastated by her slaying

More than a month after the fatal shooting, Columbus homicide detectives have made no arrests as Windham’s family is left grieving and processing the sudden, unexplainable loss of their loved one just days before Christmas.

“If you haven’t gone through it you wouldn’t internally understand what it feels like,” said Windham’s mother, 48-year-old Denica Slusher. “I don’t understand how it could happen to her of all people.”

Born and raised in Mansfield, Windham graduated in 2006 from Mansfield Senior High School, her obituary states.

Most recently, she worked at Quantum Health on the Far North Side, where her family said she was hired in October in customer service. Windham’s family said she was working while completing a bachelor’s degree in psychology online through Southern New Hampshire University, which she hoped to put to use to advance her career at Quantum.

Windham had spent years not working and moving back and forth between the Greater Columbus area and Mansfield. Despite her efforts to keep up with expenses, management at the apartment complex had taken her to court and gotten permission to have her removed nearly 12 hours earlier on the day she was killed, court records showed.

When her life was cut short, she became the 196th victim of homicide in 2021, which had already become the city’s deadliest year on record a month prior. Eight more people were killed in the remaining days of 2021, making for 204 homicides recorded within the year.

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Windham was laid her to rest on Jan. 7 at a cemetery in Mansfield where most of her family lives. Her daughters now live with Slusher and her husband at her Mansfield home, where they also spend time with Tashi, who lives nearby.

Tashi said she looks back with fondness on all the nights she spent with her sister simply sitting on Windham’s back porch listening to music and talking. Those mundane moments seemed unremarkable at the time, but now they’re the memories Tashi said she’ll cherish for a lifetime.

“After this situation, I’m losing myself and I kind of feel empty,” Tashi said.

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Windham’s sister, Ikea Windham, 32, graduated from Youngtown University with a nursing degree in early December, weeks before the murder. At the ceremony, she was touched when she discovered that her older sister had worked with Ikea’s two teenage sons to make congratulatory signs that they held aloft for her to see.

“I just feel lost because she was there for us through so many things,” said Ikea, who lives in Reynoldsburg. “She was a big support system for me.”

Windham’s family doesn’t know who would cause her harm or what possible motives that person would have. And as the days turn into weeks with her murder unsolved, they’ve attempted to make peace with the possibility that they may never have the closure that would come from knowing who was behind her death.

But they still have hope that they’ll get answers.

“She just wanted to live life and make everything better for her kids,” Tashi said. “It was always about the three of them.”