Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Isaac Siliman
A 33-year-old man got life and a 24-year-old woman got 25 years in the September 2009 murder of a 37-year-old Sudanese refugee named Isaac Siliman at the Lighthouse Bay apartment complex in Jacksonville, the site of three 2009 homicides. The twoadmitted pepper-spraying, tasering, and beating Siliman on the head with a hammer, then stealing his car, computer, credit card, and other items. Siliman became a U.S. citizen just two months before his murder and was working at Swisher International cigar company, sometimes double shift, to save up money to bring his wife Mary Laku and their daughters, Youbilla and Manuella, to Jacksonville from Uganda. He was also supporting his father in Sudan. A Florida Times-Union article tells more:
They’d met several years ago, their relationship spinning into a cycle of violence and financial desperation that eventually left a Sudanese refugee — a man who trusted them despite his turbulent upbringing — beaten and dead in Jacksonville.
When they were arrested in September 2009, Ashley Nichole Jerrell pleaded with Merlin Williams Jr. to confess alongside her.
They never meant to kill Isaac Siliman, she said, but they did. They were in it together.
Siliman, 37, became a U.S. citizen several months before the attack. He was working at Swisher International as he tried to save up enough money to relocate his wife and children from the violent, politically unstable African nation.
On Thursday, more than a year after the couple had beaten Siliman to death with a hammer in a robbery gone bad, Jerrell shook. She cried. She apologized. She bawled while hugging her father in Circuit Judge Charles Arnold’s courtroom.
She’d just watched as deputies led Williams, 33, away to begin serving a life sentence. A jury already had advised against the death penalty, a decision Arnold theorized came somewhat ironically from the conscience as the jurors learned through Jerrell’s testimony that she’d be shown mercy for her cooperation….
…Jerrell and Williams made off with Siliman’s credit cards, computer and black Nissan Xterra after attacking him with the hammer, a stun gun and pepper spray. They were preparing to burn the Nissan when the police caught them…
…Initially, Siliman was not suspicious of the couple when they showed up at his apartment because he’d hired Williams to work on his computer. Shortly before they attacked him, he shared cigarettes with them on his back patio and showed them his family photo album. Read more here
