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2 Bodies Found In Charred SUV At St. Petersburg Mall

News Channel 8 image by PAUL LAMISON

Investigators collect evidence after two bodies were found inside an SUV at the Tyrone Gardens shopping center.

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 22, 2008

Updated: 02/22/2008 06:08 pm

ST. PETERSBURG She thought it was a mannequin.

It wasn't. It was a body, a woman's body. And there was a second body with it, a man's body that she didn't see.

Later, authorities would learn, the woman was three months pregnant.

Cosmetology instructor Sherry O'Brien was among the first Friday morning to stumble upon two bodies inside a burned-out Ford Expedition, in a delivery alley behind the Tyrone Gardens shopping plaza.

One was that of Jabar McNair, a 25-year-old St. Petersburg man whose life, according to family members, took a turn for the worse despite his having won hundreds of thousands of dollars in an out-of-court settlement after a childhood injury.

Jabar McNair

The other was that of his pregnant girlfriend, Mishell McDaniels, 19, also of St. Petersburg. It was his child she was carrying, family members said.

Investigators think the pair were shot in another alley at Fifth Avenue South and 45th Street sometime late Thursday afternoon. Witnesses heard shots fired and saw the Ford Expedition speed off. McDaniels' purse was left behind.

Someone then drove the Expedition to the delivery alley behind Loraine's Academy, the hair-styling school at 1012 58th St. N. at Tyrone Gardens, where O'Brien works.

At some point after the sport utility vehicle was dropped off, it was torched, said St. Petersburg police spokesman Bill Proffitt.

Mishell McDaniels

O'Brien was bringing some food into the hair-styling school for a celebration when she and another instructor decided to take a look at the Expedition, which was parked near a trash bin.

The top half of the front passenger-side window was shattered; the bottom half appeared to have a bullet hole, she said. Had the window not been shattered, she said, she would not have been able to see anything inside, so thick was the soot covering the tinted windows.

But she did peer in, she said. She saw a leg.

"I saw what I thought was a mannequin," said O'Brien, 40, whose husband is a dispatcher with the St. Petersburg Police Department. "It turned out to be a body."

On the foot of the leg was what looked like a new Converse sneaker, she said. At the other end was a skirt, she said. She remembers seeing a leather Western-style carrying case, perhaps a wallet.

There was blood on the dashboard, and on the running board, she said.

"I didn't think it was real," she said. "I didn't think it was happening."

She didn't see the second body.

"It looked like they were going to the back seat for something," she said of police.

McNair was scheduled to go on trial next month on two counts of sale and delivery of cocaine, computerized court records show. He had previously been convicted of cocaine possession, they show.

"Did drugs play a part in this? We don't know but we're going to take a look at it based on Jabar's history," said Maj. Mike Puetz.

In addition to two counts of homicide, the culprits may be looking at a charge related to the fetus's death depending on the viability of the child, Puetz said. The autopsy is expected to help investigators determine whether the shooter could be charged with causing injury to the mother in a way that brought about the unborn child's death, Puetz said.

Valorie McNair-Gordon, McNair's mother, said her son had an opportunity to make something of himself. He attended the private Canterbury School of St. Petersburg, and then the Laurinburg Institute, a private boarding school in North Carolina. He never went to college.

Valorie McNair-Gordon said the family sent him to Laurinburg to prepare him for the $350,000 he was slated to receive when he turned 18. McNair won the money in an out-of-court settlement after a maid frightened him at a motel when he was an 8-year-old boy and he fell down a flight of stairs, losing sight in one of his eyes, she said.

At one point, after he matriculated at Laurinburg, he catered food and detailed cars, and owned his own home. But then his life took a turn for the worse, she said. He no longer owned the home and was living sometime with his mother and other times with his aunt.

"He just chose to do the wrong thing," she said. "A man with his money can sometimes be a fool. It seemed like it took him the wrong way."

He was also generous, she said. He gave his mother close to $100,000 to help her pay bills, used some of his money to bail friends out of jail, and just Thursday he gave $25 to a homeless man, she said.

"It was nothing for him to give you $2,000 or $3,000 when he had it," she said.

Whatever he did in his past, he did nothing to deserve to die the way he did, she said.

"Of course, I'm upset. … My heart … I love him," she said. "It was a big chunk out of my life."

When reached by telephone, McDaniels' mother said she was too upset to discuss her daughter.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.

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