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Letter to the editor

Police arrest man in slaying

The victim's 6-year-old daughter tells her aunt that she witnessed the attack.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published June 12, 2007

CLEARWATER - After the killing, when the medical examiner had taken her mother's body away, Dashona Hooks told her aunt everything.

The 6-year-old said she was hiding in the apartment late Saturday night when the scary man came in. She said he fought with her mother, Lashonda McKinnes, then cut her throat with a kitchen knife, wiped it off, and started kicking her.

When the man left, Dashona came out from hiding and ran across the hall of the apartment complex in north Clearwater.

"She told her neighbor that she saw her mommy - that her mommy was dead, " said Maurice Mack, McKinnes' older sister. "The neighbor told her no, that she was just dreaming and to go back to sleep."

The killing was discovered just before 10 the next morning.

On Monday, Dashona and her two sisters, ages 3 and 4, were safe at their aunt's house in St. Petersburg. Dozens of family members and friends descended on the house, bearing bags of food and condolences. Their only brief reprieve came with the news that police had arrested a man in the murder.

John Lee Hampton, 33, of Georgia, was charged with the killing. He was released from a Georgia prison in March 2004 after serving 11 years for child molestation. He has an outstanding warrant from Georgia for kidnapping and is the target in the investigation of a rape and aggravated assault that took place in Georgia last month, police said.

"If he could only think how many people he affected with this, " Mack said.

Cocaine a factor

A thin, pretty woman with a taste for braids and wigs, Mc-Kinnes, 25, went by the nickname "Peanut." She was a premature baby, her sisters said, and the diminutive nickname stuck.

She had worked at Checkers and at a Clearwater nursing home and knew Hampton through a friend.

Hampton had been over to the apartment a few times. Mc-Kinnes thought he had a warrant for robbery, her sister said, but had no idea he had a history as a sexual offender.

On Saturday, McKinnes went to a baby shower for a friend. She returned after 6 p.m. to the Sable Walk apartment complex, with its purple doors, purple shingles and purple flowers.

That night she held a party for three people: a girlfriend, Hampton and another man. McKinnes and the two men played Tonk, a form of rummy often played for money, while the girlfriend watched television.

Everyone left the party by 1 a.m. or so, but then Hampton returned. According to an arrest affidavit, he came back to the apartment with the intent of stealing cocaine from Mc-Kinnes. Police said there were no signs of forced entry.

At some point, a fight erupted. Hampton told detectives that he had consensual sex with Mc-Kinnes and then decided to stab her in the throat when she caught him stealing cocaine from her.

The arrest affidavit also said Hampton poured lighter fluid on McKinnes' body and cleaned her "to cover a possible sexual assault" - though police have not said whether she was raped.

On Sunday morning, a friend, Tiara Jones, found McKinnes' body in the bedroom and called police. McKinnes was unrecognizable, Jones said.

A crowd gathered around the complex and Hampton was among those who showed up.

Police discovered that he had an outstanding warrant from Georgia for kidnapping and arrested him. As they interviewed him, they became more intrigued. During questioning, officials said, he admitted to the murder. Monday night, he was being held at the Pinellas County Jail without bail.

'They have nobody'

In the aftermath of the killing, McKinnes' family was struggling to get through the day. The father of McKinnes' children is not in the picture. Maurice Mack, 21 years older than her sister, took custody of the girls - a responsibility made all the more difficult because she already cares for two other nieces whose mother is incarcerated.

"I got these kids with nothing, " Mack said. "Right now they have nobody."

The family is working to set up a bank account to pay for McKinnes' burial.

After that, the questions get more complicated. How will the girls go on without a mother? How will they heal from the trauma? And what, if anything, will Dashona Hooks remember about the last night of her mother's life?

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or 727 445-4157.

[Last modified June 11, 2007, 23:36:47]