Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 10, 1993 TAG: 9307100144
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The bodies of Jessie James Wright, 25, and his daughter, Jessica, were found around 9 a.m. by family members at an abandoned house at the end of Lemon Lane near Explore Park, said Roanoke County Detective P.J. Patrone. Each had been shot.
The night before, Wright kicked in a door at the home on Signal Hill Avenue Northwest where Jessica and her mother, Christina Saunders, 18, lived. Pointing a revolver at Saunders and three other people, he took the child and left, Roanoke police said.
Saunders and the others obtained warrants against Wright for brandishing a firearm, and police staked out his home overnight. But he wasn't seen again until morning.
Patrone said someone in Wright's family at one time might have owned the house where the bodies were found, and Wright might have played there as a child.
Jessica's grandmother, Gale Saunders, lived in the same house as her daughter. She was at work when Wright took the child, but her son's girlfriend told her that Wright burst in "out of control, in a terrible rage."
Gale Saunders said her daughter and Wright, who lived on Fifth Street Southeast, often argued, but they loved their daughter.
"They'd flare up and eventually smooth down," she said. "It was always like that. I'd gotten used to it."
Wright had talked of suicide before, she said, but she didn't know what set him off Thursday night.
"If he wanted to die, he wanted to take her with him," she said. "That's the only thing I can figure.
"He loved Jessica."
Keywords:
FATALITY ROMUR
by CNB