VIDEO: Remembering Dr. Shauna Witt

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Patients and friends of Dr. Shauna Witt are sharing memories of her.

Dr. Witt was shot and killed Saturday morning, at her eye clinic in the Starkville Walmart.

A good soul gone too soon, that’s what Dr. Shauna Witt’s friends say about Saturday’s tragedy.

Witt was from Batesville, but has lived in Grenada for the last 15 years or so, and drove back and forth to Starkville every day for work.

“She was always the one that made you smile in the end,” says close friend, Bess Patterson.

Flowers, a bible, and a wreath, now replace the crime scene tape that lined this door Saturday morning, after Dr. Shauna Witt was shot and killed.

Brittany Da’nielle Nichols was supposed to have an eye check up with Dr. Witt around the same time the situation unfolded.

She says it goes to show you how precious life is and will really miss the smiling doctor.

“Perky, energetic. I had my kids with me, and this little one with me, and he normally doesn’t go to everybody and hug them, but he ran up to her and she was like, ‘oh my gosh, he is so adorable.’ She really connected with patients and their children.”

Bess Patterson had no idea Friday night would be her last time to talk to her best friend, who’s been by her side since 2005.

“She’s always been there for me. Tough situations, I had a very high-risk pregnancy with my daughter, Molly. Her and Molly, she was actually Molly’s godmother.”

A godmother, best friend, and a healer; no matter the role, friends, patients, even fellow optometrists, who went to school with Dr. Witt, say she always lit up the room.

“She was just a down home girl. She’d walk into a room and it’s, ‘hey y’all,’ you know, so sweet, so compassionate, so caring. She had so many friends. I mean, we were just all Shauna fans because she was just that girl,” says optometrist Dr. Tonyatta Hairston.

Patterson says although a lot has happened to her friend over the last several months, she never let the bad keep her from seeing the good.

“I know that she would want everybody to remember her as the happy person, that always, always turned a negative situation into a positive situation.”

Dr. Hairston says the Mississippi Optometric Association in conjunction with their non-profit arm, the Mississippi Vision Foundation, hopes to work with the Southern College of Optometry, to set up a memorial fund in Dr. Witt’s name to honor her legacy.