Mother of murder victim says 'enough'

TAMPA (FOX 13) - With thunder crashing down around the gazebo at Ballast Point, Kathleen Whiting stood with her daughter's friends to say, "enough."

"I want all the women out of there going through this situation, please, step up, get out of it," she said.

Of the dozens who lit candles and wrote notes in a summer storm for 23-year-old Brittany Collett, it was Brittany's mother who lost the most.

"I wish more people would step up and help other women," continued Whiting. "Then their life wouldn't end up like my daughter's."

Her mother took the crowd as a statement that domestic violence won't be tolerated.

"That is how much she is loved," said Whiting. "Everybody cares about her. She is a good person. She has had a hard life. She didn't deserve this." 

Several of her co-workers at Buffalo Wild Wings on South Dale Mabry said they knew things with former Plant High football star Tykese Keaton-Baldwin were rocky before the pair left to go on vacation. 

"It is hard to hear, because maybe it was preventable," said Heather Allen. "It is hard for people to leave that too. You care about someone, but you don't deserve something like that."

Her mother says Brittany was the victim of a controlling relationship, that Keaton-Baldwin would show up at her job unannounced, look at her phone or control who she associated with.

"I kept trying all the time," said Whiting. "She just wanted to see the goodness in him. She didn't want to see the bad."

She says Brittany's young son will grow up without his mother.

"Her son, he won't even know the devastation yet. He can't even look into his eyes and say hey I took your mom's life away from you."

Keaton-Baldwin now faces second-degree murder charges.  He's being held in a Michigan jail until a court date later this month.