Hundreds Remember Murdered DFW Teen
MESQUITE (CBS 11 NEWS) - Outside of Horn High School in Mesquite, hundreds of Shania Gray's friends, family members and teachers gathered. At times the sobbing was so intense that it echoed throughout the parking lot. At one point, one student even had to be rushed to the hospital. Her friends said that she was crying so hard that she had a seizure.
"This hurts me to my soul," said close friend Janell Brown. "This is the most tragic thing I've felt in my young age." Brown said that she was always singing with Gray -- sometimes in class and sometimes in the hallways.
Franklin Davis is accused of killing Gray. In a jail house interview with CBS 11's Susy Solis, he confessed that he did it because she accused him of rape. Her body was found along the banks of the Trinity River in Irving.
At Monday night's vigil, the group prayed, holding candles and remembered a life taken too soon. Gray's mother was also at the vigil, but she didn't say much.
"I used to tell her your daddy is going to die before you and your daddy is popular, and you don't know, and it's going to take the biggest church there is because your daddy is popular," says Shania's father, Dwayne James. "And Shania said, 'Daddy, when I die, you will need two or three football fields.'"
Those close to Gray said that she was not only a great singer, but also very good athlete. One of her coaches said that she touched many lives with her infectious smile. "As a coach, that's a very hard thing, just the potential that she possessed. All the coaches, we were talking about how she was just a well-rounded athletic and young lady," said Gray's assistant basketball coach, Shelby Holland.
The family is still working on funeral arrangements, but think it will most likely be Saturday.
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