Murder suspect killed at funeral of victim
abby now
She was questioned in the killing of the dead man, her boyfriend. His
mother's theory: revenge
GOLDSBORO, NC - A woman who had been questioned in the killing of her
live-in boyfriend was shot to death herself Thursday at his funeral.
The dead, Raheim Antwon Kornegay and Sharon Nichole Sheppard, had a
7-month-old child together and three children with other partners.
Kornegay's mother, Rosetta Stevens, said late Thursday night that she
believed Sheppard's killing was revenge for her son's death.
"I just wish everybody would let it go," Stevens said, wiping tears with the
top of her gray nightshirt. "And now, because people were trying to
retaliate for something, these children don't have a mother or a father
right now. I'm really scared for everybody."
Kornegay, 23, was shot to death Sunday at the apartment he shared with
Sheppard, 28. She was home at the time, and police said in a Thursday news
release that she was a "person of interest."
Sheppard was shot as about 300 mourners were shuffling out of a funeral home
after a simple service for Kornegay. The sermon was about the value of a
life.
"The service had concluded and the family was leaving the chapel," said the
Rev. Ernie Haskins, funeral director at McIntyre Funeral Home. "I heard
gunshots ring out."
Stevens had just gotten into a limousine outside the strip-mall funeral home
on the southwest edge of Goldsboro when she, too, heard a shot, she said.
The limousine driver told her to get inside the building. Then she heard
what she called a hail of shots.
Mourners rushed back into the funeral home screaming about the shooting,
Haskins said. He called 911.
Scores of people were outside when the gunfire erupted. But police were
asking for information on who did the shooting.
"Everybody had their own version of what happened," Stevens said.
Investigators said they found Sheppard in a parking lot outside the funeral
home. She was taken to Wayne Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced
dead, according to the news release from the Goldsboro Police Department.
Efforts to reach Sheppard's family were unsuccessful.
At Kornegay's mother's mobile home in a trailer park off West New Hope Road
on Thursday night, several dozen people were gathered. Some stood in
circles, talking about the events of the last four days.
Tucked away in a room at one end of the trailer, Stevens sat fielding
cell-phone calls from loved ones, struggling to get time to grieve for her
son -- and the young woman she thought of as a daughter. Though police had
talked to Sheppard about her son's killing, Stevens said that took nothing
from her pain.
"I don't like accusing no one of doing nothing," she said. "Everybody is
innocent until proven guilty. I've been trying to keep my opinion to myself
and let the police do their investigation."
Stevens said events had been spinning out of control since the weekend.
On Friday, Stevens said, a social worker and a police officer went to
Kornegay and Sheppard's apartment to take the four children away. Someone
had called authorities and complained that the couple had guns in the house.
"I told them to keep their head up," Stevens said. "Just clean the house up
and they were getting the kids back."
The children went to stay with a relative, she said.
Two days later, her son was dead. Stevens said the night Kornegay died she
and Sheppard mourned together at the hospital.
"I loved her like my daughter," Stevens said. "All her children called me
'Grandma.' "
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