One week ago today, Kenneth Dewayne Smith was on Facetime with his girlfriend, urging her to be on time for their date at Cheesecake Factory.

It was just before 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 6, and he and Brianna Braxton – the parents of a 5-month-old boy – were in good spirits, looking forward to some laughs and some drinks.

“He was smiling, and just telling me to be ready,’’ Braxton said. “The next thing I knew, all I could hear was him shouting.”

“The whole time I’m thinking he’s in a car wreck,’’ she said. “The phone started tumbling and the way he sounded, it was like the car was flipping over. Everything was at a standstill and the phone went black.”

Within about 20 minutes, Smith – affectionately known as KD – was dead inside his Jeep Cherokee that had struck a home in the 800 block of Beacon Drive in Fairfield.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said Smith was shot multiple times.

Braxton said it’s something she’ll never forget.

“I started calling out, ‘KD, KD,’ she said. “All I could hear was him grunting. It was like he was trying to talk back but he couldn’t.”

Moments later, a bystander picked up Smith’s phone because they could hear Braxton screaming on the other end.

“They told me it was bad, and to get there,’’ she said. “I asked if he was still breathing, and it took a while for them to answer me. They said he a slight pulse and the ambulance wasn’t there yet.”

Braxton called Smith’s mother and headed that way.

When she arrived in Fairfield, she saw multiple shell casings on the ground. She didn’t go much closer.

“I didn’t want to see him like that,’’ she said. “I stayed at a distance.”

Smith was killed the day after his 26th birthday.

Braxton said she is grief-stricken over the loss.

“His life was so precious,’’ she said.

Smith grew up in Avondale and attended Wenonah High School. Braxton said he was focused on bettering himself for his family.

“He wanted a family. He was becoming a better man,’’ Braxton said. “It was taken away from me.”

“He was a good-spirited person,’’ she said. “He would help any way that he could.”

Smith, Braxton said, loved his son, his mother and his entire family.

“I didn’t have to lift a finger when it came to his son,’’ she said. “He would make bottles and everything.”

“I’m hurting so much, just thinking about what could have been,’’ she said.

No arrests have been made.

“I don’t want this case to go cold,’’ Braxton said. “I really want to know who did this to him.”

Just three days after Smith was shot, Braxton’s cousin – 24-year-old Jaqoin Carpenter – was shot while in the intersection of Oporto-Madrid Boulevard. He died Thursday at UAB Hospital.

“He had a newborn baby as well,’’ Braxton said. “All this gun violence, I just want it to stop.”

“Growing up, we didn’t have this much violence at all,’’ she said, “and it just hurts my heart.”

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777 or sheriff’s detectives at 205-325-1450, option 2.