The daughters of a mother who was murdered in broad daylight were facing eviction from their metro Atlanta apartment before movie mogul Tyler Perry offered to pay the slain woman’s outstanding lease and funeral costs.
Tynesha Evans, a mother of three daughters, was killed outside a Wells Fargo bank branch in the northern Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, Georgia, by her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Othniel Inniss, after she fell on hard times and asked Inniss to help her pay her rent.
According to WSB-TV, Inniss, 58, told Evans to meet him at the bank so that he could hand her the money she needed. Instead, when they stepped out of their respective cars in the bank parking lot, he shot her in cold blood.
Evans died at the scene. An armed passerby stopped and held Inniss at gunpoint until Alpharetta police could arrive and take him into custody, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Inniss has been charged with murder and aggravated assault with a firearm. No explanation has been given for why Inniss shot Evans. He remains in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta.
The children, already on the verge of eviction, could barely articulate the gravity of their loss.
“She can’t kiss me. She can’t tell me to wake up in the morning after I missed my alarm. She can’t. She’s not here,” youngest daughter Sakemia Turner told WSB-TV.
A heartbroken Tyler Perry learned of the murder and, subsequently, the devastated family’s precarious predicament through the television station and immediately contacted one of the reporters to offer his help.
Perry is going to take care of the surviving daughters’ rent as well as pay for the costs of the funeral. The AJC also noted that Perry will even offer to fly Evans’ body back to Wisconsin for a proper burial.
Furthermore, Perry will pay off the college tuition for Sharadiant Turner, a mathematics major at Spelman College, so that she won’t have to drop out, the AJC reports.
“It’s everything because I didn’t think I would be able to come back next year,” Sharadiant Turner told WSB-TV. “And just to know I can finish all four years and do what my mom always wanted me to do.”
The other two daughters were equally awed and humbled by Perry’s gesture.
“There’s really no words to describe how I feel,” said the oldest daughter Audrey Turner, 26. “Because not only is he going to help my mom with her funeral, he’s going to help with my living situation.”
The youngest daughter, Shakemia Turner, 14, simply said Perry was “an angel on Earth.”
