SALT LAKE CITY -- Four days after 15-year-old Baleigh Bagshaw was brutally killed inside her home in Salt Lake City, her mother spoke with Fox 13 News.
“She was a bright individual, she had dreams and she had a future—and that future has been taken away from us,” Shawna Bagshaw said.
Bagshaw recalled her last conversation with Baleigh on Monday afternoon. She said Bailegh would usually call her on her way home from the bus after school, and the pair would chat as she let her dogs outside and checked the mail for her mother.
“She had said OK, such and such a thing came in the mail, whatever, and then all of a sudden she started screaming and she didn’t say anything," Bagshaw said. "She was just screaming; my dogs were barking, and then I heard nothing."
Confused and terrified, Bagshaw called the bishop of her LDS congregation, who lives across the street from her. He called her other neighbor, who was home to check on Baleigh at the house.
That neighbor called Shawna, who told her to knock on the back door of the house.
“She proceeded to open the door and saw blood and called 911,” Bagshaw said.
Bagshaw told police who she suspected, 24-year-old Shaun French. She said French had lived with Baleigh, Shawna, and Shawna’s son in March to July of 2017. That is when French got to know Baleigh.
Salt Lake City Police confirmed French has a sexual relationship with Baleigh. She was only 14-years-old at the time, French was 23.
Police tracked French down in Colorado, and he is set to be extradited back to Utah, though that process has been delayed because French requested a Utah lawyer to represent him.
Shawna said Baleigh wanted to be in the United States Army or Marines one day. She said Baleigh also loved service animals and wanted to be a service dog trainer. She also enjoyed photography.
“I am not going to be able to see my daughter graduate from high school, or college; I am not going to be able to walk her down the aisle when she gets married; I am not going to see grandchildren from her," Bagshaw said. "Those are things I’m going to miss out on because she was taken too early from life.”
Bagshaw wants justice for her daughter.
“Right now, I am extremely angry," she said. "Maybe years down the road I can forgive, but right now I can't. He terrorized and harmed my child, and as far as I can say, I cannot forgive him for that."
Loved ones have created a GoFundMe page to assist Baleigh's family with funeral expenses.
