Jonathan Tennie had stayed beside his partner through housing instability before a family-connected dispute ended in gunfire, she said.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — Before Jonathan Tennie was fatally shot outside a Columbus motel, his fiancée says he had chosen to remain beside her through the loss of their home, nights in hotels and periods spent living in a car, even though he could have stayed elsewhere.
That account of Tennie’s final months has become central to how Meagan Starkey remembers the 34-year-old man whose death on Sept. 16 led to murder and firearm charges against 24-year-old Tararus Toliver. Starkey told WTVM that Tennie stayed with her because he did not want her to face their housing crisis alone. She also said the fatal confrontation began when Tennie objected to how Toliver, whom she identified as her sister’s boyfriend, was speaking to the women. Toliver has pleaded not guilty, and the case has been sent to Superior Court.
Starkey said the couple had recently lost their home and were moving between temporary places to sleep. At times, she said, they stayed in hotels; at others, they lived in their car. Tennie had relatives he could have turned to for housing, according to Starkey, but she said he chose to stay with her. That decision was part of a broader pattern she described after his death: a partner who saw her problems as shared problems and who treated her relatives as though they were already his family.
The couple’s circumstances also help explain why the setting of the shooting was more than an incidental location in their story. Columbus police were dispatched at about 4:54 p.m. Sept. 16 to a Motel 6 in the 3000 block of Victory Drive after a report of a shooting. Officers found Tennie wounded. Emergency crews transported him to Piedmont Columbus Regional, where he died. Police said they had not found a permanent address for Tennie, consistent with Starkey’s description of the couple’s recent housing instability.
Starkey said Tennie had also formed a close bond with the younger members of her family. “He loved my nephews fiercely,” she told WTVM. “He was their favorite uncle in the world.” She and Tennie were not yet married, but she said he already treated her relatives as his own. The statement shifted the public picture of Tennie from the basic identifiers in the police report — name, age and victim of a homicide — to a man whose partner said he had remained committed to her during a period when both of them lacked a stable home.
The relationship among the people involved also shaped Starkey’s description of the argument. Toliver was not a stranger, she said, but her sister’s boyfriend. According to Starkey, the dispute developed when Tennie took issue with the way Toliver was talking to the women. She said Tennie would speak up when he believed women were being disrespected. The available police release did not independently state that the argument began for that reason, so the account remains attributed to Starkey rather than established as an official finding about motive.
Starkey told the television station that she was able to calm Tennie after the verbal confrontation began. According to her, Toliver continued arguing and eventually pulled out a gun and fired. She later described Tennie’s intervention in stark personal terms: “He saved me. I’m here because he’s not. Over a family quarrel.” Authorities have not publicly said in the materials reviewed that Starkey herself was the intended target of a shot, and her statement should therefore be understood as her own interpretation of how Tennie’s actions affected what happened.
What police have said publicly is that the confrontation was captured by surveillance equipment. During Toliver’s Sept. 18 court appearance, investigators said two witnesses and video identified him as the shooter. They said the footage showed an argument between Toliver and Tennie followed by Toliver pulling a gun and firing. That evidence gives prosecutors more than the emotional recollections offered after the shooting, although the reports reviewed do not disclose the full recording or describe everything visible and audible on it.
Toliver was arrested after the shooting and charged with murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Police announced the charges on Sept. 17. At his court appearance the next day, Toliver pleaded not guilty. A judge ordered that he remain jailed without bond and sent the case to Superior Court. The plea means Toliver contests the criminal allegations, and no finding of guilt has been reported in the sources reviewed.
The court development marked a change in how the case could be understood. In the first hours, police confirmed only that a man had been shot, that Tennie had died and that a suspect was in custody. By the following day, Toliver had been publicly identified and charged. At the preliminary hearing, investigators added the existence of the surveillance video and two witness identifications. Starkey’s interview, meanwhile, offered a separate layer of information about the relationships and dispute that she said preceded the shooting.
Those two accounts — official evidence and a grieving partner’s memories — overlap without being identical. Police say the video documents an argument and the shooting. Starkey says the argument was rooted in Tennie’s objection to the treatment of women in the group. She also says she calmed Tennie before the argument continued. The information released publicly does not establish every word exchanged, how long the confrontation lasted or whether investigators have adopted Starkey’s description as the prosecution’s theory of motive.
Nor do the available reports describe any statement Toliver gave police after his arrest. They do not say whether he has asserted self-defense, accident or another explanation for the shooting. His not-guilty plea preserves his ability to challenge the accusations, but it does not by itself explain his defense. The publicly described evidence instead centers on the video, the two witnesses and the accounts gathered by investigators and reporters after Tennie was wounded.
For Starkey, however, the shooting’s significance extends beyond the evidence that will eventually be tested in court. Her recollections focus on the choices Tennie made before his death: remaining with her when their housing situation deteriorated, building relationships with her nephews and stepping into a dispute she believed involved disrespect toward the women. Those details do not determine the legal case against Toliver, but they explain why Starkey described Tennie not only as the victim of a shooting but as someone who repeatedly chose to stand beside her.
Police said their Violent Crimes Unit continued investigating the homicide after Toliver’s arrest and invited anyone with additional information to contact investigators. That request left open the possibility that detectives were still assembling witness accounts, physical evidence and other records even after the case entered court. The reports reviewed do not identify additional arrests or another person accused of participating in Tennie’s death.
For Starkey, the court case continues alongside a more immediate loss: the partner she said stayed with her through homelessness and became part of her family is gone. Toliver remains jailed without bond after pleading not guilty, and the case has been forwarded to Superior Court. No final ruling on the charges was identified in the reporting reviewed.
Author note: Last updated November 7, 2026.