Slain pregnant woman was IUP student
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Sharon Gaines talks about her granddaughter Shavaughn Wallace, 18, who was shot and killed Friday night on the North Side.
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The little sign in front of the modest ranch house read "Bless this House." Inside, a child coughed.
From behind the front screen door, a rough, agonized voice shouted: "Get back from the door! Get back!" Then the door opened, and Shavaughn Wallace's grandmother, 70-year-old Sharon Gaines, stepped outside.
No longer shouting, the small woman dressed in pink began to speak, softly at first, about her granddaughter, who'd just finished her first year of college and, at age 18, was weeks away from giving birth before she was shot to death Friday night on the North Side.
Ms. Wallace, of Dakota Street in the Hill District, had been sitting with her boyfriend in a car parked along Alpine Street and Pryor Way in the Mexican War Streets, where he had an apartment.
Police said a gunman emerged from a wooded area across the street around 11:15 p.m. and started shooting into the crowd that had gathered there -- firing as many as a dozen shots, striking two cars.
Ms. Wallace got out of the car and tried to run away, but was shot in the back. Police found her lying near the rear of 215 Alpine St. She was later pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
Yesterday afternoon, the narrow street was mostly deserted. Two residents standing on their front stoops said they'd seen nothing, knew nothing. Across the street from the vacant lot where Ms. Wallace was shot trying to escape, tall grass had been trampled.
Police said the investigation is continuing. They would not say whether they believed Ms. Wallace or her companion were targets of the gunman.
Ms. Gaines wrung her hands and shook her head.
"You talk to your kids. You talk and you talk and you talk to them," she said. "I always tried to lead her to God, that was my first thing, that she knew God."
Ms. Wallace attended St. Benedict the Moor School and graduated from Schenley High School. She had just finished her first year at Indiana University of Pennsylvania's School of Business, where she was majoring in management.
She was, her grandmother said, a young woman who "did good in school, did very good in grades, but somewhere along the line I think ... she met up with the wrong people. She was kind of naïve, you know?
"I loved her and watched her. I loved her, she did good in school, she'd mind me."
Ms. Gaines didn't talk about Ms. Wallace's pregnancy, but she did talk about how carefully she and her own mother -- the victim's great-grandmother -- watched over her while Ms. Wallace's mother worked.
"[My mother] didn't want her in school until she could talk and understand. We walked her through that period. We tried to keep up with her and push her towards the right goals," Ms. Gaines said.
There is evidence that they succeeded.
Ms. Gaines was interested in school and seemed to get along with others, said Dornell Jackson, 18, a Hill District neighbor who attended grade school and high school with her.
"She was a happy person," he said.
Sometime during the last year, however, Ms. Wallace met a young man and became pregnant. Ms. Gaines said she knew her granddaughter's boyfriend's first name, which she declined to provide, and said she wasn't sure how her granddaughter met him.
"I used to go to the North Side years ago -- dancing," Ms. Gaines said. "But I've told her, the North Side? Off limits. She met up with somebody over there ... "
Once, Ms. Gaines said, she encountered and confronted the young man when he came to pick up Ms. Wallace, ordering him to pull his car over.
" 'Who are you? What are you doing?' " Ms. Gaines said she asked him.
"I was born in Mississippi," she went on. "We don't blow horns in front of peoples' houses. We get out and meet the people. Meet the grandmother. I'm the grandmother. And I introduced myself to him. 'No problem,' he said. 'No problem,' he told me, and walked on back and got in the car."
But her granddaughter only replied, "OK, grandma," and continued to go out with him.
Ms. Gaines shook her head.
"You have to be careful wherever you go. You gotta be wise and careful when we send you off to school. We send you off to better yourself, everything, your life, everything. This is another generation.
"How can you take people's lives and don't think about it? How can you live like that? No conscience, no conscience."
Then she turned and walked back into her house.
First Published May 24, 2009 12:00 am
