PUBLISHED TUESDAY, JULY 8, 2003

Teen loved church, hair styles, the friend accused of killing her

Ginny Graybiel
@PensacolaNewsJournal.com

Just about every Sunday morning, 15-year-old Ashley Harvey was at the Greater Little Rock Baptist Church singing her heart out.

The third Sunday of each month, she sang with the junior choir at the North A Street church. The other Sundays, she sat in the congregation, listening to the adult choir and singing hymns along with them.

"She just loved it," said Pamela Stallworth, the former choir director. "She'd be one of the loudest ones, especially with something she liked."

More often than not, Christine Rogers, Ashley's 13-year-old friend, neighbor and godsister, was with her.

"I'd see Ashley all the time with that little girl," Stallworth said. "Christine wasn't in the church, but I knew they were friends. They were always together."

That close friendship makes what happened Saturday night even more unfathomable.

Christine is accused of chasing Ashley with a butcher knife around 10:10 p.m., cutting her in the neck and leaving her to die at Q and Belmont streets, in front of the duplex where Ashley lived with her mother.

It all happened after some sort of a dispute about fireworks. Earlier in the evening, the girls had been tossing them at each other.

On Monday, neighbors recounted looking on with horror, unable to stop the stabbing that was to come.

Ashley, 6 feet tall and more than 200 pounds, zigzagged between houses as she tried to get away. Christine, 5 feet 7 inches tall and 135 pounds, closed in within seconds.

"I saw Christine chasing Ashley," said Laporsha Bradley, 13, a neighbor and friend of Ashley's who had just returned from a trip to the neighborhood Tom Thumb with her. "She was calling her `fat' and `big.' She was yelling, `Ashley, you're going to die tonight.' "

Bessie Johnson, 56, another neighbor, heard much the same thing.

"Christine was yelling, `I'm going to kill you, you oversized b----,' " Johnson said.

On Monday, Circuit Judge John Parnham ordered Christine, arrested shortly after the slaying, to remain in the Escambia Regional Detention Center for juveniles on an open charge of murder.

Assistant State Attorney David Rimmer said that he plans to seek a first-degree murder indictment from a grand jury today. If charged, she then would be tried as an adult, facing a potential penalty of life in prison.

Still a girl

Beverly Sue Harvey, Ashley's mother, hasn't been home since going to Baptist Hospital on Saturday night, hoping for a miracle for her only daughter.

Harvey and her sister, Alfornette Williams, instead have been at the home of their mother, Lois Williams, the three of them seeking comfort from each other.

"Ashley was a good person," said Harvey, 49. "She didn't know any strangers."

Ashley's aunt, 46, said her niece's looks and a loud and boisterous personality made people think she was older.

"She was a big and tall young lady, but she was still a child," she said.

A couple of years ago, when Ashley already was close to 6 feet tall, her aunt went shopping with her for an Easter dress. The clerk kept trying to move them out of the children's department to the women's department.

The aunt wouldn't budge.

She kept telling the clerk: "She's a child. There's got to be something here for her."

Ashley also loved to play with neighborhood children.

"Nowadays, you have 15-year- olds who like to go to the clubs," said Nitra McNeil, 22, a family friend. "But she liked to play with 2- and 3-year-old kids in the neighborhood."

Ashley's mother reveals a secret. She never would have breathed a word if Ashley were still here.

"She just stopped playing with her dolls," the mom said. "She didn't want people to know that."

But Ashley's mother and aunt say what they'll miss most are the soul-stirring hymns that Ashley belted out almost every day in that strong alto voice.

"When the choir sang a good song, she'd imitate it all week," her aunt said. "She'd clap in the car, and she'd move around. She was a good imitator. She could imitate anything."

Trouble in school

Ashley's days at school weren't always easy.

She attended Pensacola High School as a ninth-grader, but she got into too many fights. Other kids bothered her, her mother and aunt said. Maybe it was her size, they said. Maybe it was jealousy over the fact that she had one new hair style after another. Or maybe she did something to annoy classmates.

Whatever the reason, she was suspended frequently.

For that reason, Harvey said, her daughter was going to transfer in August to Dixon Educational Center, which offers programs for students struggling in traditional classrooms.

Harvey was hoping she would graduate from Dixon and one day fulfill her dream of becoming a cosmetologist.

"Ashley loved hair - braids, twists," she said. "She'd just put her hair in a twist with a ponytail. She'd change it all the time."

Doesn't seem real

In the neighborhood where Ashley and Christine lived, there was disbelief Monday.

Christine's mother, like Ashley's mother, has not been at home since the slaying. The neighbors haven't seen her.

People who knew both girls paused at the discolored, dried, pool of blood on the street. It was a stark reminder of what seemed impossible.

"Ashley wasn't the sort of girl who would start something, and she didn't start it Saturday," said Laporsha, the 13-year-old friend.

Said another friend, 18-year-old Lavondria Witherspoon: "Ashley was a funny person, very energetic. All of this doesn't seem real."

Laporsha said relations between Ashley and Christine had been on and off for some time.

"They'd talk for one day. They'd be mad the next day. They'd talk the next week," she said.

Laporsha and Lavondria said Ashley often stayed with her grandmother for a few days at a time. So, on Monday, it seemed like she was away, not dead.

"It's going to be real hard when the funeral comes," Lavondria said. "That's when we'll know it's true."