OkieGranny
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Maybe not technically a cold case, but justice not done, IMO. Excellent feature article about this very sad story:
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/two-gunshots/
At 11:25 p.m., the three St. Johns County officers arrived at 4700 Sherlock Place, a one-story suburban house in this historic seaside community. A young deputy, Jonathan Hawley, was already there. Oh my God, he cried, seeing a young woman he knew lying on the bedroom floor, an inert, bloody mess.
Michelle OConnell, 24, the doting mother of a 4-year-old girl, was dying from a gunshot in the mouth. Next to her was a semiautomatic pistol that belonged to her boyfriend, Jeremy Banks, a deputy sheriff for St. Johns County. A second bullet had burrowed into the carpet by her right arm...
Within minutes of the shooting on Sept. 2, 2010, Mr. Bankss friends, family and even off-duty colleagues began showing up, offering hugs and moral support. He huddled with his stepfather, a deputy sheriff in another county, before a detective interviewed him in a police car...
Ms. OConnells family, immediately suspicious, received a starkly different reception from the authorities. Less than two hours before she died, Ms. OConnell had texted her sister, who was watching her daughter: Ill be there soon. Yet when her outraged brother tried to visit the scene, officers blocked his way. The familys request for an independent investigation was rebuffed, as was one sisters attempt to tell the police that in the months before she died, Ms. OConnell said she had been subjected to domestic abuse by Mr. Banks...
Ms. OConnell, the sheriffs office concluded, took her own life. Detectives were so certain in their judgment that they never tested the forensic evidence collected after the shooting. Nor did they interview her family and friends, who would have told them that she was ecstatic over a new full-time job with benefits, including health insurance for her daughter.
http://mayportmirror.jacksonville.c...ho-was-found-dead-home-shared-st-johns-deputy
As the sign of a supporter at Tuesdays rally/news conference stated, the OConnell family is not going away. That was the message conveyed at a media event in front of the St. Johns County courthouse complex.
Armed with a letter to State Attorney R.J. Larizza and a new witness statement, several members of Michelle OConnells family and other friends continued to demand a coroners inquest of her death.
Four years ago, Michelle lost her life; it was taken, sister Jennifer OConnell said Tuesday. Were asking State Attorney Larizza to please order a coroners inquest and follow through with the recommendation of FDLE that says the manner of death was consistent with homicide more so than suicide.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/witness-emerges-florida-womans-2010-death/story?id=25227390
On Tuesday, a witness statement by former bar owner Danny Harmon was introduced. Harmon says Banks came to his bar the Ring of Fire the night after OConnell died, making suggestive remarks about her.
He told me that all she ever did was put him down and make him feel bad about himself, Harmon said. He was going to be moving on with his life, and he wasnt going to let the [explicative] hold him back anymore.
In a sworn affidavit, Harmon stated that he believes that Banks had something to do with OConnells death.