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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Neighbors React to Alleged Slay-Grilling |
| 2007-03-26 |
| Follow-up to yesterday's item... HOUSTON (AP) - For at least two days, neighbors at a city apartment complex noticed an acrid aroma, black smoke and leaping flames coming from two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment. What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on in the unit where 27-year-old Timothy Wayne Shepherd lived? What was he burning at all hours, for days at a time? The answer turned their stomachs. According to law enforcement officials, Shepherd dismembered, and then burned the body of his former girlfriend, Tynesha Stewart, a 19-year- old Texas A&M University student. Nothing remains of Stewart's body, Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said at a press conference Saturday. "I just don't know what to think about it," said Louis Evans, whose balcony faces Shepherd's in the quiet tree-lined enclave in northern Houston. "I thought he was a nice normal person. I guess you never know what your neighbors are doing." "Such a nice, quiet man..." Authorities said Shepherd has confessed to strangling and dismembering Stewart, a college freshman who was home on spring break, because he was angry that she had started a new relationship. ...and now their relationship is in pieces... On March 16, neighbors said they first noticed the unusual activity—and the unpleasant odor—on Shepherd's balcony. "The smell was awful," said Evans, who also became alarmed after seeing a blaze shoot out from the grills. "I was wondering: What is he burning? Not cooking, but burning. There is a difference." At times, Evans said, the flames from the grills leapt dangerously close to the roof of the balcony. Evans says he called 911, but when firefighters arrived, the flames had calmed and Shepherd assured them everything was under control. "She just flared up there for a minute nothing to worry about..." Another neighbor, 18-year-old James Hebert, told The Houston Chronicle that he often cooked out with Shepherd... Uh-oh. ...and even left his grill at Shepherd's apartment. When he wasn't invited over, he asked his neighbor what was going on. Shepherd replied that he was cooking for a wedding, the newspaper said. Oh, man... that's COLD. "This certainly turned out to be one of the most heinous crimes I've ever seen in my 38 years (in law enforcement)," Thomas, the sheriff, said Saturday. Understatement of the year... |
| Posted by:Dave D. |
| #5 "two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment" Somebody should have called the Fire Marshall. Most places with a fairly modern fire code forbid any grilling on apartment balconies, because of the fire hazard. When I was a firefighter, I saw more than one apartment building fire due to a hibachi on a balcony. It's been against the code in our Virginia county for decades, and I'll bet it's against the Houston fire code, too. Of course, the neighbors probably didn't want to get involved.... (Or maybe they didn't want the Fire Marshall to notice the grills on their balconies.) |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2007-03-26 19:59 |
| #4 Alright, if no one else will say it, I will! Headline could've been: "Another HOT Chick on Springbreak!" |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2007-03-26 16:54 |
| #3 "For at least two days, neighbors at a city apartment complex noticed an acrid aroma, black smoke and leaping flames coming from two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment." "The smell was awful," said Evans, who also became alarmed after seeing a blaze shoot out from the grills. Never a good sign. You'd think someone would have suspected something was not quite right and called the authorities. I don't see a line in the paper with a quote from the family stating, "But he was turning his life around. We just don't understand what happen. He must have snapped." Yeah Right!! |
| Posted by: delphi2005 2007-03-26 12:48 |
| #2 So the big question...charcol or propane? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-03-26 09:29 |
| #1 Methinks the Milwaukee police haven't found all of Jeffrey Dahmer's local victims yet. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-03-26 03:17 |