Traci Swan, Killed In Worcester, Was Mom Who Worked With Teens

WORCESTER, MA — Traci Swan was 16 when she moved with her family from a tiny North Carolina town to Worcester. It was difficult. She left behind family and friends, and she was near the end of high school.

But Swan, described as a "fighter" by her family, adapted quickly, her mother remembers.

“It wasn’t even her first week of school, and she came home and said she was going out with a friend,” Swan’s mother, Dianna White, said this week.

Swan, 27, accomplished a lot in her short time in Worcester, from becoming a mother to landing "the best job ever" helping teenagers recovering from addiction.

Swan was killed in a stabbing May 26 — Worcester’s first homicide of 2020. Her death shocked her family, leaving them questioning what really happened in the kitchen of the Meade Street apartment where the stabbing occurred.

Swan was born in North Carolina in Pollocksville, which sits at the edge of the Croatan National Forest about an hour’s drive from the Atlantic Ocean. Swan was White’s first child; she would be the oldest to four sisters. Childhood in a small town was great for Swan, White remembers.

“Everybody knew everybody; it was small town USA,” White said.

Swan followed in her grandmother’s footsteps, White said, taking on a variety of interests, from volleyball and cheerleading to singing in the local choir and playing in the school band. She was in the 4H Club, Girl Scouts, and was a DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) ambassador in middle school.

The move to Massachusetts came in Swan’s junior year of high school. White met and married a man stationed at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. He was originally from Worcester, and so the family decided to head north.

They lived in a home off Shrewsbury Street at first. At North High School, Swan got engaged in familiar activities, like volleyball, but it “took her a while to adjust,” her mother said. Swan dropped out in her senior year, telling her mother she knew more than the teachers.

Swan immediately got a job with her mother at the Dodge Park Rest Home in Worcester. She worked there for about seven years, earning her GED and becoming a Certified Nursing Assistant.

At 24, Swan’s life changed when she gave birth to her daughter, Jaylah.

“Her daughter was her world,” White said. “If she was not at work, she was with her daughter. It changed her when she had a daughter.”

It was around that same time that Swan left Dodge Park and took a job at Spectrum Health Systems in Westborough working with teens battling addiction. Swan worked as an overnight supervisor right up until she was killed. Spectrum held a candlelight vigil after her death.

Details about what happened to Swan are thin, but authorities believe she was stabbed trying to break up a fight between a man and a woman — two people Swan knew very well, her mother said.

Police responded just before midnight to an apartment near the corner of Meade and Lafayette streets. Outside, they found a man, who is Jaylah's father, applying pressure to her stab wound. He was also wounded in the arm, according to police.

A neighbor called 911 after hearing an argument in the apartment. Police believe the stabbing happened inside the home, and that Swan was in between a man and the other woman when she got stabbed. That woman, Naomi Lawrence, 29, has been charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon.

White thinks there’s some details missing. Swan knew Lawrence for about six years and had even babysat for her. The part about her intervening in a fight makes sense, White said.

“When it came to other people fighting, she would do her best to diffuse it,” White said about the stabbing. “I have so many questions about it.”

Still, White also has cherished memories of her daughter. Swan loved soul food and hiking at Green Hill Park. Her favorite saying was "long hair, don't care," which she would deploy if anyone gave her any guff. She was incredibly close with her sisters, especially the next-oldest, Summer. The two lived together in Worcester.

“I know sisters have bonds, but those two have a connection I think some sisters wish they had,” White said.

One memory about the five sisters stands out for White. When Swan was 15, she taunted her sisters for needing to get booster shots before summer camp that year. But when the family arrived at the doctor’s office, they found everyone was up to date — except Swan. When the tables turned, her sisters saw an opportunity watch their sister squirm.

“[Her sisters] actually convinced the nurse to let them watch her get the shot,” White said. “They all still talk about that.”

Swan's whole life was in Worcester and she didn't have plans to move away. Sometimes she talked about moving back to North Carolina. She wanted to have a house on the beach with a big porch where everyone could hang out.

Over the July 4 weekend, Swan will return to the state where she was born. White and her family are planning to bury Swan’s ashes in a family plot with her grandmother in Pollocksville.