Rick Jackson Controversy Georgia

Secoriea Turner's Mother Asked Rick Jackson to Stop Using Her Murdered Daughter in His Ads. Her Lawyers Say His Next Ad Used Her 911 Screams.

The family of 8-year-old Secoriea Turner, shot dead in Atlanta in 2020, sent Rick Jackson's campaign a cease-and-desist letter over using her name and image. Their attorneys say the campaign answered with a new ad featuring her mother's screams on the 911 call. Her mother calls it 'pure evil.'

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 09, 2026

Secoriea Turner's Mother Asked Rick Jackson to Stop Using Her Murdered Daughter in His Ads. Her Lawyers Say His Next Ad Used Her 911 Screams. — Photo: Maya Homan / Georgia Recorder

Secoriea Turner was 8 years old when she was shot and killed on July 4, 2020, riding in a vehicle near the Atlanta Wendy's where police had killed Rayshard Brooks weeks earlier. In September 2025, a Fulton County jury convicted Julian Conley of her murder; he was sentenced to life without parole plus 25 years.

Now her name, her picture and her mother's worst moment are in campaign ads for Rick Jackson, the Republican nominee for governor of Georgia. Her family has asked him to stop. He hasn't.

The family said no. The campaign kept going.

Jackson has been using photos and news coverage of Secoriea's death to argue that Keisha Lance Bottoms, his Democratic opponent and Atlanta's mayor at the time, failed to keep the city safe, the Georgia Recorder reported.

Last week, her mother, Charmaine Turner, publicly asked him to stop using her daughter's name and image, and sent his campaign a cease-and-desist letter. According to the family's attorneys, the campaign didn't honor it. It doubled down — releasing a new attack ad featuring Charmaine Turner's screams as she called 911 after Secoriea was shot.

FOX 5 Atlanta reported that the new ad uses the girl's image and 911 audio from the shooting, and that the family's earlier letter to the campaign had made clear it never gave permission to use her image. Charmaine Turner's statement, through her attorney:

"This is pure evil for someone to use my daughter's image to run for an office."

At a press conference Thursday, family attorney Mawuli Mel Davis put it plainly: "She should not be part of any political or campaign stunt. This is real pain."

"They are not a political talking point"

Jackson's campaign wouldn't say whether it would pull the ads. Ahead of the press conference, spokesperson Garrison Douglas released a statement defending them:

"We cannot imagine the immense pain the Turner family has gone through. They are not a political talking point. They are one of the major reasons why Rick is running — so that another family does not have to experience such a devastating tragedy as a result of Keisha Lance Bottoms' abdication of her duty."

Read that next to what the campaign is actually doing. It says the family is "not a political talking point" — in a statement defending its decision to keep putting the family's daughter, and her mother's 911 call, into political ads the family begged it to stop running.

Another family attorney, Shean Williams, called the ads "morally irresponsible" and said Jackson never once contacted the Turner family before using Secoriea's image.

"If it's not a political point and he really cares about Secoriea Turner, her legacy, her image, then why hasn't he even reached out before today, before he ran for governor?" Williams asked. "It tells me it's a political talking point because this is all political."

Whose permission he didn't ask for

A political campaign can argue about a former mayor's record on crime. That isn't the problem here. The problem is the choice to build that argument out of a specific child's death, over the explicit objection of the people who lost her.

Charmaine Turner isn't neutral about Bottoms, either. In 2021 she filed a lawsuit against Bottoms and the city over how they handled the protests, and that case is still pending. She has every reason to want accountability for what happened to her daughter. She still doesn't want Rick Jackson using her.

And Jackson can afford to run any ad he wants. He has already put more than $100 million of his own fortune into this race and added an $87 million ad buy on top of it. With that much money, there is no shortage of other ways to make a case about public safety. The campaign chose the one the victim's family asked it not to use.

In summary

Rick Jackson's campaign has used 8-year-old Secoriea Turner's name and image in ads attacking his opponent. Her mother sent a cease-and-desist letter asking him to stop. Her family's attorneys say his campaign responded with a new ad featuring her 911 call after her daughter was shot. Jackson's spokesperson defended the ads, and the family says Jackson never contacted them before using her image.