It's just one depressing detail after the next in the tragic life of Jashaya Stanley, a single teenage mom who died yesterday at age 19 near the Whitman Houses in Fort Greene. As an infant her hand was badly burned on a radiator at a Chinese restaurant, which agreed to pay out $13,000 in a settlement. That money was supposed to go to Stanley when she turned 18, but when she came of age her mother cut her a check for just $8,500. Stanley, who by that point already had a two-year-old daughter, took her grievance on the Nancy Grace "Swift Justice" show. (Here's the sad transcript.)
Stanley won the rest of the money thanks to Nancy Grace, but yesterday she died at the hands of her ex-boyfriend and father of her daughter, Joshua Knox, police sources tell the Daily News. Knox, who is still at large, just got out of prison a month ago after doing time on a drug rap. Witnesses say the two were arguing yesterday when Knox punched Stanley in the face, and she retaliated by throwing bleach in his face.
Knox left but soon returned with a gun. "He shot her six times in the chest," Stanley's aunt Deridre Baker told the News. "He couldn't beat her. I guess he had to kill her."
