Grieving woman murdered

Ebony Jefferson was shot while mourning the death of her mother with relatives.

CLEVELAND (AP) — A Cleveland family’s loss is doubled due to an apparently random shooting.

Ebony Jefferson, 31, was shot to death as she sat with family members on the porch of a house grieving the death of her mother.

Now her funeral will be Saturday along with the funeral of her mother, Lorena Jefferson, 55, who died Sunday of complications from breast cancer.

Ebony Jefferson was with others playing cards on the front porch of her aunt’s Cleveland home Tuesday night when a man dressed in black walked up and threatened them, telling them to lie on the floor.

Family members told him to leave.

Police said that as he started to walk away, he turned and fired about nine shots. Jefferson was hit in her right side and died at MetroHealth Medical Center.

Police have not made an arrest.

Lorena Jefferson just two months before had graduated from Cleveland State University with a degree in social work. Lorena and Ebony had posed together smiling then as the mother wore her cap and gown.

Ebony Jefferson had worked as a medical aide at the Cuyahoga County Jail since 2005. Co-workers, shaken by the news, gathered for a prayer service Wednesday at the jail chapel.

Neighbors praised Ebony Jefferson for raising daughter Brittany, 12, and son Marquise, 11, so well. The children were with a relative elsewhere at the time of the shooting.

“This is an outrage,” Councilman Zachary Reed said. “This lady is sitting on a porch, about to bury her mother, and now the family has to look at how to bury the mother and the daughter.”