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Widower's life moves on; pain does not
By BRADY DENNIS, Times Staff Writer ZEPHYRHILLS -- Byron Jones can't escape. But he tries. He fires up his white Lincoln and backs out of his dirt driveway and hits the open road. He rolls down the window and cranks up the stereo and lets the wind and the music wash over his bald head, praying his thoughts will drift away with them. He wanders the aisles at Wal-Mart, shopping for nothing but peace of mind and a cheap answering machine to take the flood of calls that have come since she died. He doesn't eat. He barely sleeps. He cries every day, sometimes for hours. Who can blame him? He's haunted by the thunder of a Glock 9mm that fired bullets into his wife's chest. In his dreams he keeps seeing her fall to the floor, her blood staining the carpet, again and again and again. As if that weren't enough, another thought gnaws at Byron Jones. "I didn't tell Sally I loved her that morning," he said. "You get busy, you get things going on, and you just don't take the time to say, "I love you.' " Sally Hayner was only 16 when her family showed up at the Methodist church where Byron Jones' father was preaching. Her mother was from American Samoa. Hayner was born in Los Angeles. Her father, a military man, eventually moved the family to Florida. Jones was 22, raised in Zephyrhills. He took one look at Sally's dark eyes and dark hair and felt his knees go soft. Her age didn't matter to him. "Her dad always trusted me," Jones said. "I guess it helped that I was a preacher's kid." On one of their first "dates," she rode along in his pickup to drop a load of trash off at the local dump. The couple married two years after they met. They held the wedding reception at the house on Tucker Road where they would live their entire married lives. But the house, which Jones had been building himself, wasn't finished in time for the reception. So wedding guests mingled amid the exposed wood framework. They stared at a hole in one wall that someday would become a fireplace, with family pictures propped on the hearth. The Joneses finished the house together. They hammered nails. They put up drywall. Sally Jones worked wearing her thin gold wedding band, the one her husband bought her for $19. Years later, when they ran a jewelry store, he begged her to let him get her a better ring. She refused. "That's the one you bought me," she would say. During 21 years of marriage, she never took it off. As usual, Byron and Sally Jones were at work the morning of May 22 at Dan's Fine Jewelry, 36516 State Road 54. A relative called and said three Pasco County sheriff's deputies were in front of the couple's home. Byron Jones went to check. He found no one there, so he headed back to the store. He saw a patrol car outside the store when he returned just after 11:30 a.m. but thought little of it. As he walked from his car, only feet from the store's entrance, he heard the shots. He ran to the door but couldn't get in because of the door's electronic lock. "I saw Sally. She twisted and fell face down," Jones said. "I'm screaming, "Let me in!' The deputy just stood there and looked at me. She went over to Sally and rolled her over. (Sally) was covered in blood. She was dead. I screamed and screamed, but (the deputy) wouldn't let me in." The deputy, 24-year-old Erica Fernandez, told investigators that when she arrived, Sally Jones was standing beside the counter, her arms by her side, holding a gun. Fernandez said she repeatedly told Sally Jones to drop the gun, then began backing toward the door. She said Jones raised the gun in her direction. Fernandez fired. More than 20 years together, and they had still acted like kids. Every night, Jones looked forward to crawling into bed. He'd cuddle close to his wife like a teenager in love for the first time. "It might sound weird, but I would bury my head in her hair or in her skin just so I could smell her, so I could breathe her in," said Jones, 45. "I just had to hold her." Now, he wakes alone. He hurries out of the house. Even then, he's can't visit places they used to go together. Recently he tried to go to church, where they had spent countless hours volunteering and worshiping. He made it through five minutes of the service before he had to leave. They used to drop by Sonny's Real Pit Bar-B-Que several nights a week after work. The other day Jones got an iced tea to go, and even that was a challenge. Their 15-year-old daughter, Holly, hasn't spent the night at home since her mother died. Too many memories there. But Holly hasn't shed nearly as many tears as her father. She planned the funeral. She did her mother's makeup and hair. She even sang during the service. Jones sat in the pew thinking, "How can you be that strong?" Byron and Sally Jones were planning to move to American Samoa. Byron bought plane tickets, on Delta, leaving June 28. "I wanted to watch the sea roll in and the sun go down with her," Jones said. He's getting a refund on the tickets. When he's at home now, which isn't often, he opens the stacks of sympathy cards or listens to the countless messages on his answering machine. Beyond that, his future remains uncertain. He's hired a Tampa attorney and has vowed to sue the Pasco County Sheriff's Office for wrongful death, no matter what the outcome of the investigation by the Federal Department of Law Enforcement. "I'm going after them," Jones said. "What I want is that deputy and the others (like her) off the street where they won't kill anyone else. Money won't do anything for me; it won't bring Sally back. But I want to sue them for enough that it hurts." Why had Deputy Fernandez gone to the jewelry store in the first place that day? According to authorities, 39-year-old Sally Jones had sent an e-mail to federal investigators in Chicago who were investigating her brother-in-law, Dan Jones, on suspicion of railroad retirement fraud. Dan Jones had gotten full disability from the railroad years earlier, but allegedly continued earning a salary from the jewelry store, which would violate disability laws. Dan left the business in February, but the investigation caused tension in the family, tension Byron Jones says he'd rather not discuss. Investigators said Jones' e-mail to Chicago stated that she would be dead by the time they received it. Fearing Sally Jones might be suicidal, the investigators called Zephyrhills police, who asked sheriff's deputies to check on her. But mysteries remain. Byron Jones acknowledges that he left his Magnum .357 handgun in a drawer in the store, but he said Sally Jones wasn't holding a gun when he saw her fall. He says only a Gatorade bottle lay near her on the floor. He also says -- along with other family and friends -- that Sally Jones never showed any outward signs of being suicidal. And he wonders why the sheriff would send any deputy, especially an inexperienced one, alone to check on someone he thought was suicidal. Most questions will have to wait for the outcome of the FDLE investigation, which could take another week or two. Even then, Jones fears the truth won't be revealed. That day, as deputies surrounded the store with police tape and TV news crews rushed to the scene, Sally Jones' family gathered in the emergency room of East Pasco Medical Center. Some of them sobbed. Others paced the room, irate with sheriff's deputies. Through a set of double doors, Byron Jones stood beside the bed where his wife lay dead. He took the $19 wedding ring off her hand and slipped it onto his pinky finger. He never takes it off. -- Brady Dennis covers the city of Zephyrhills and crime in east Pasco. To reach him, call (352) 521-5757, ext. 23, or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6108, then 23. His e-mail address is dennis@sptimes.com.
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