Shooting leaves NY family in shock
Published:Thursday | February 10, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Laura Redpath, Senior Gleaner Writer
AVALISA MORRIS was always looking ahead, making plans for a future that eventually went up in smoke and ended in bloodshed.
The 26-year-old, originally from Little London in Westmoreland, planned a birthday party for a friend in St Albans, a residential area in the Queens borough of New York.
But the party came to a ghastly end as shocked friends and family members were left to come to terms with Morris' death.
The non-confrontational woman, a past student of Frome Technical High School was known to her family as a peaceful person who loved to make people laugh and always had to have music around her.
"She was a beautiful person," said her cousin, Larrisa White, whose voice was shaky on the telephone.
It was nearly 4:30 a.m. on Sunday when the New York Police Department (NYPD) showed up at the St Albans house, responding to a call saying a a woman had been shot.
Mairs O'Neil, who is also a Jamaican, and not well known to Morris or her cousin, showed up at the party to confront another woman, but Morris put her foot down and forced the party crasher to leave.
However, he did not leave quietly and according to police, of the shots he fired, two hit Morris in the head and abdomen.
When the emergency response team arrived, Morris was declared dead.
O'Neil has been charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment.
Morris, who was a banker in Queens, spent the entire previous Saturday preparing Jamaican dishes for family and friends for the party.
"The last real conversation we had was when she came into the house where the party was being held," White recalled. "She took off her jacket and took me into the bathroom, but there was no mirror.
"She asked me to fix her hair for her and I did and she was wearing a nice dress and I said, 'What a way you sexy.' She smiled. Oh that smile. It warmed people's hearts."
Morris visited Jamaica often, and up to her death was reserving tickets for her next trip to Jamaica.