Family of former Yakima woman devastated by homicide

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Jessica McPherson was the girl who wanted to participate in everything.

At Davis High School, she would perform with the cheer squad during football games, then run on to the field to join the color guard at halftime.

She competed in a beauty pageant and bowled on the school team.

After high school, she joined the Army National Guard and helped with Sunday school classes at her churches, both in Yakima and after moving to an Oklahoma City suburb several years ago.

"She didn't want to miss anything in life. She wanted to do anything she could," her mother, Judy Richardson of Yakima, said in a telephone interview Friday.

The 23-year-old mother of two, several months pregnant with her third child, was found shot to death Jan. 11 at her home in Midwest City, Okla.

The man suspected of killing her was arrested this week, according to news reports from Oklahoma.

Police said he told detectives he was hired by McPherson's estranged husband to carry out of the killing and that he killed her as she slept next to her two children. McPherson's husband, Fabion Brown, and his girlfriend have also been arrested. Brown told reporters he was innocent.

McPherson married Brown in Yakima after they met at boot camp, her mother said.

While in Yakima, she served with a local chemical company, a National Guard spokesman said. She transferred to an Oklahoma unit and had not been sent on a scheduled deployment to Iraq because of a medical issue, her mother said.

The couple moved to Oklahoma several years ago to be near his family and had a 2-year-old-girl and 4-year-old boy.

Richardson said she is seeking custody of the children.

A funeral has been held in Oklahoma, but Richardson said that exhausted her available funds.

The family has set up donation accounts at Bank of America and the Washington State Employees Credit Union, which has a branch off Fruitvale Boulevard near 40th Avenue, to help cover expenses for a funeral in Yakima.

McPherson's body is being held by a local funeral home as relatives wait to make arrangements.

She was working as a clerk for Loomis, the armored car company, and hoped to transfer to the Spokane office, Richardson said. McPherson was planning to attend nursing school in Spokane.

"She just wanted to help people," Richardson said.

Richardson said she wished McPherson could have moved back to Washington sooner.

"It shouldn't have happened," she said about the homicide.

* The Associated Press contributed to this report.

* Mark Morey can be reached at 509-577-7671 or mmorey@yakimaherald.com.