When Wayne Solomon got home one evening last week, his wife told him his mother had been in the news.
Rubye James, 92, was missing. “I thought she took off or went shopping. I didn’t know,” he said Monday.
Solomon drove to his mother’s house on Edgewood Road in Leesburg to find it swamped with deputies and cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape.
Someone had stabbed and beaten James to death.
The Lake County Sheriff’s arrested two young men Friday and accused them of murdering James and burying her in a shallow grave in some woods after ransacking her home and stealing $70.
“We are distraught and torn to pieces,” said Pastor Jeffrey Z.E. Thomas of Powerhouse of Jesus church in Bushnell, where James was a parishioner for the past five years. “We didn’t expect anything like that to happen to a 92-year-old woman. You expect someone like her to go in her sleep or at the hospital from an illness.”
Neighbors said they were shocked and frightened to hear that Krystopher Laws, 21, a convicted felon, and Joshua McClellan, 18, both of Leesburg, were accused of brutally killing longtime resident James.
“My grandparents owned all this property, and she was the first to move in,” said Clarine McCall, 78, one of James’ neighbors.
McCall, and another neighbor, Verdell McCants, 82, were troubled by the details of James’ death.
“The young people of today, you can’t put too much trust in them,” said McCants, whose son played with Solomon as they grew up and walked with him to Rimes Early Learning & Literacy Center across the street.
James spent most of her time in her yard, the gem of the neighborhood with its pink flowers and well-manicured bushes. She often paid people to help her with the work, said McCall, who runs a hair salon.
One of those workers was McClellan, according to an arrest report.
“My grandparents owned all this property, and she was the first to move in,” McCall said.
For years, Solomon said, his mom never bothered to lock her door. She lived on property her dad bought decades ago.
But times changed, and so did James’ habits, her son said.
“She was so conscientious, about people breaking in or whatever, she had a lock on her garage door,” he said. That’s why he thinks the two suspects forced their way into her home, he said.
Laws, however, told deputies he and McClellan came to James’ home to steal money for marijuana. When she opened her door, they walked in and Laws hit her in the head, according to the arrest report. He said they both then stabbed James. A bloody knife was found with her stolen Hyundai Veloster, the report states.
McClellan’s mother brought her son and Laws to the Leesburg Police Department for questioning after she was told they had stolen James’ car from a parking garage near the Leesburg library, according to the report.
By then, Laws told police, he and McClellan had already spent the $70.
Laws was released from state prison in December 2015 after serving an 18-month sentence for petty theft and burglary committed in Lake County in 2014, Florida Department of Corrections records show.
James, by contrast, spent most of her life working.
She juggled several jobs in addition to her main position as a middle school reading specialist with the Sumter County School District, her son said.
She also worked at Leesburg Regional Medical Center and at a janitorial service. She was a graduate of the University of Rhode Island, he said.
“She was a private person, a real private person,” Solomon said. “Real independent.”
Solomon said he’s not angry at the suspects.
“The man side of me would like to get my hands around their necks, but the piece of Jesus in me says you can’t do that,” he said.
McClellan and Laws are being held without bail in the Lake County Jail on charges of premeditated murder and home-invasion robbery.
Staff writer David Harris contributed to this report.
Police report: Rubye James brutally slain over $70 for marijuana »
Two arrested in murder of 92-year-old woman in Lake County, deputies say »
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