Sharon James says she tried to warn her mother

Sharon James is refuting claims of any involvement in the marital affairs of Ingrid Jack-Franklyn, which could have led to the double homicide in the Coconut Range, Campden Park community.{{more}}

Just hours after her mother Marva ‘Hazel Ann’ James and friend Ingrid were slain by Jack’s husband George Franklyn, James told SEARCHLIGHT that she does not know why Franklyn, also known as ‘Chocolate’, turned his gun on the women, just before eight on Tuesday morning.

“I don’t know if he see we talking… he probably see we talking and believe that we was talking about him. The woman is a woman like this; she don’t tell Campden Park people she business,” James, a mother of three said.

James admitted that she was a casual friend with Jack, with whom she had last spoken the previous Saturday. She said they discussed a birthday party that was scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, for Jack’s five-year-old daughter, whose birthday was on Wednesday this week.

She said that they also spoke about ‘3-D’; but that was all.

“We didn’t talk nothing about their relationship… nothing about him, nothing about she marriage. Nothing.”

“I didn’t know they were going to divorce. People saying that I have a dealings in they divorce. I don’t know nothing about that.”

Reliving the events of a few hours before, James said that she was sitting in the porch of her home having breakfast with her mother Marva, known in the community as Hazel-Ann.

Marva’s last meal would consist of hard dough bread, sausage and Milo beverage.

James said when she heard gunshots ring out, she ran up to the street.

“When I look, I see he (Franklyn) running coming.

“He said ‘Come here, Sharon, is you ah want, is you ah want,’ and he pelt a bullet behind me, but the bullet ain’t ketch me.

“I run down now and I tell mommy ‘Chocolate coming wid ah gun,’ but I don’t know if she think me ain’t serious, so I run in the house.

“From the time I could reach in the house and run in the bedroom, I hear another shot outside, and when I look, he come right in the hall and shoot Simeon.”

Marva, 49, who for some reason failed to react to her daughter’s alert, was shot at close range in the head by the gunman.

The impact of the bullet knocked her out of the plastic chair in which she was seated, and left her dead on the floor of her porch.

19-year-old Simeon, who had not too long came home from his night shift at the East Caribbean Group of Companies (ECGC), was asleep on the living room floor, when he received a bullet to the right side of his stomach.

James said that she took cover in a bedroom until Franklyn left the house.

Luckily for the family, some other occupants of the house, including young children, had already left for the day.

She then pulled her brother to another bedroom and locked the door and climbed through a window and sought help at the home of a female police officer who lives not too far from her.

According to James, even though she knew that her mother was shot, it took a while before she realized that Marva was dead.

Family members who gathered at the home later that day expressed their shock that Marva would have met such an unexpected and tragic death.

The postal service worker and part time vendor was described as a person always in good spirits.

Marva’s son Romano, who arrived after the shooting took place, said that he is distraught over the death of his mother and the shooting of his younger brother.

“I never thought that he (Franklyn) would do something like that, especially to my mom; but she would be in a better place right now. I want to make sure that my brother is okay at this point.”

The family said that they are awaiting an update on Simeon, before making funeral arrangements for Marva, a mother of four, who may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.(JJ)