Murdered Florida CO was from NH

[KBCraig]

UnionLeader.com - New Hampshire news - Guard killed in Fla. prison had NH ties - Tuesday, Jul. 8, 2008

Guard killed in Fla. prison had NH ties

By MARK HAYWARD
New Hampshire Union Leader

A one-time Wolfeboro-area woman who relocated to Florida and eventually took a job as a corrections officer was stabbed to death while looking for a missing inmate inside the prison where she worked, Florida authorities said.

Donna Jo (Shure) Fitzgerald moved to New Hampshire as a young child and graduated with honors from Kingswood Regional High School in Wolfeboro in 1975, family members said. She was crowned the Homecoming Carnival Queen while at Kingswood.

"She was very gregarious, very good looking, very intelligent," said Chris Emmel, the longtime companion to Fitzgerald's sister, Dana "Missy" Shure of Wolfeboro. "Everyone I've spoken to said if you walked away from Donna and weren't laughing, you were crazy."

According to news accounts, Fitzgerald was stabbed numerous times June 25 upon discovery of a missing inmate at the Tomoka Correctional Institution in Daytona Beach.

Enoch D. Hall, 39, has been charged with first-degree murder in her death.

According to Florida news accounts, Fitzgerald had been looking for Hall in a building where vehicle repair and other vocational programs are taught. Hall told police he was hiding in the welding shed and had fashioned a knife out of sheet metal, which he used to stab Fitzgerald, according to his arrest affidavit.

Hall has a lengthy criminal record of violent crime going back to 1989. He was serving two life sentences at Tomoka, one for rape in 1992, another for a rape, abduction and assault in 1993.

Emmel said the family is disturbed by the reports about Fitzgerald's death.

"Right now everything is in a haze, but if reports are correct, let me ask you this -- when you're missing a criminal as dangerous as this, why on God's green earth would anyone, male or female, be without a partner officer? Just doesn't make sense!" Emmel said.

Florida corrections officials have said there is nothing to indicate that proper procedures weren't followed.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal Online reported that corrections officers are normally equipped with a radio, a chemical agent and a body alert. It's unclear whether Fitzgerald, who had worked at the prison for 13 years, had all three pieces of equipment during the search.

She was born in West Virginia and moved to Melvin Village as a young girl when her father, Donald "Zeke" Shure, took a job as a lineman. She was raised in the Wolfeboro area.

She worked at the former Back Bay Boathouse in the 1970s, Emmel said.

She left Wolfeboro to attend school in Massachusetts. She moved to Daytona Beach in 1985, drawn in part to the car racing tradition. She worked part-time for the Daytona Beach International Speedway during race week and bike week.

Florida newspapers quoted friends who said she was devoted to her son, Kyle Jon Antonelli, who is 20. He told the Daytona Beach News-Journal Online that his father died two months earlier.

His mother, he said, "was the best person in my life."

"Words cannot express the sorrow I feel over the loss of our correctional officer," Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil said in a written statement. "The entire department grieves the murder of one of our finest officers, and we pray for the victim's family during this difficult time."

Fitzgerald's funeral is tomorrow in Daytona Beach.

[dsns5000]

We need a mandatory death sentence in every state. There are way too many s**tbags in the world.