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• Mother and son shot and killed in Dale, SC

34-year-old Jeanine Mullen

Waltfredo Mullen

DALE, SC (WTOC) – A mother and her 4-year-old son are dead and her 2-year-old son is in critical condition after being shot at their home. It happened Sunday night on Player Drive in the Dale Community in northern Beaufort County.

No one has been arrested but the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office has been interviewing a person of interest.

While they aren’t saying who that person is, we do know the 2-year-old boy’s father was arrested Monday on drug charges, but authorities won’t say if he is the one they are questioning.

As investigators put the pieces together, friends and family are mourning the loss of two loved ones, 34-year-old Jeanine Mullen and her son, Waltfredo Mullen. Waltfredo was celebrating his birthday the night he and his mother were shot and killed inside their home.

“To have something so tragic to such a young life, someone who hasn’t even experienced anything, someone who hasn’t had that opportunity to go to school, get married, go to college, that was stripped away from him, taken so violently and so senselessly,” said Mullen’s close friend and coworker Alleen Porter.

Mullen’s 2-year-old son Jeremiah Daise, was also injured. He was transported from Beaufort Memorial Hospital to the Medical University South Carolina in Charleston.

Porter says she got the horrifying call from Mullen’s 13-year-old son Sunday night.

“I could hear a child crying, saying, ‘my mother is on the floor, she’s not moving’,” said Porter. “When I got that phone call, never in a million years did I think that I had lost a friend and coworker.”

Mullen was not only a mother of four, but a kindergarten teacher’s assistant at Shanklin Elementary School.

“She touched lives, she was just a genuine person, genuine friend, warm, loved,” said Porter.

Many in this close-knit school are trying to make sense of this senseless crime, but Porter says it isn’t easy.

“She loved the children, she loved her job,” said Porter. “There is an emptiness, a feeling of void because we have a missing part of our family.”

Although her personal life never interfered at school, Porter says Mullen had a history of domestic abuse and was working to make life better.

“She was getting her life on track, she was beginning to get her teaching certificate, she had plans, she had a bright future,” said Porter.

But Porter never imagined it would end like this.

“Never in a million years would I thought that, read about it across the world, other places but never here at home,” said Porter. “Jeanine was a special angel and angels should not be treated the way she was with such a brutal, brutal thing done to her.”

The school did have counselors on site today to help students and teachers deal with this horrible situation.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is assisting with the investigation.

If you have any information concerning this case, call the Beaufort County Dispatch Center at 843.524.2777.

©2009 WTOC.