When Ashley Evans showed up for a spur-of-the-moment weekend visit, her father didn't know anything about the trouble she was fleeing. Posted on 03/02/2005 4:03:59 PM PST by bikepacker67
CHELTENHAM, Md. - Ex-NYPD cop Wayne Evans was in agony yesterday after he handed over his 18-year-old daughter to detectives who charged her in one of New York's most shocking recent murders.
When Ashley Evans showed up for a spur-of-the-moment weekend visit, her father didn't know anything about the trouble she was fleeing.
It wasn't until Tuesday - when NYPD cops called seeking to question her in the lower East Side slaying of actress Nicole duFresne - that the former lawman was forced to confront his daughter.
He told her to cooperate with cops, having no idea she would soon be charged with murder.
"I teach all my kids right from wrong," the distraught dad told the Daily News yesterday.
"I'm 46, I've done good, I've lived longer than lots of black men do," Evans added in an interview at his suburban Washington home. "But my mother used to tell me, and I tell my kids now: 'You get locked up, I'm not coming to get you.'"
Evans' nightmare began late last week when his daughter, who was raised in Queens by his ex-wife and only saw him sporadically, asked to come visit over the weekend.
He sent her a bus ticket.
When Ashley arrived at the bus station, she blurted, "Dad, did you hear about the lady that got shot in New York?"
She said she had heard about the disturbing killing of the 28-year-old actress on the news.
"She told me she heard that the woman had said, 'What are you going to do, shoot me?' and then the guy shot her," Evans said. "It just went in one ear and out the other for me. I mean, what kind of nonsense is this? Who would do that?"
But Ashley was so interested in the case she later showed him a news story about it on the Internet, he said. He hadn't a clue she was actually involved until he got a call from her mother Monday night, saying cops wanted to talk to Ashley about the murder.
At the time, he had just come down with a terrible stomach virus, he said, and he couldn't really think straight.
Then the cops called and he knew it was serious. He told them to come down - and told Ashley to pack her things.
"What kind of people are you hanging out with?" he demanded of his daughter. "Why can't you find decent people?"
She muttered some "jibber-jabber" about her boyfriend, he said. "She seemed a little remorseful."
Evans, 46, a genial electronic systems technician, couldn't understand it. Law enforcement, playing by the rules, runs deep in the family.
Evans was a cop in the 113th Precinct in Queens from 1992 to 1995 and later was a special police officer at the Energy Department in Washington. His brother and sister are correction officers at Rikers Island.
But Ashley always ran a little wild after the bitter divorce, he said. She came to live with him and his new wife in Maryland in the summer of 2001.
However, he sent her home to New York because she wouldn't obey house rules like not inviting people over when he was at work.
"Her problem is her mother didn't guide her right," Evans said.
But when cops arrived at his home late Tuesday, Evans had no idea his daughter soon would be hit with second-degree-murder, weapons and robbery raps.
"I asked the police, 'Is my daughter under arrest?' They said no, that they just wanted to question her," he said, his anger rising.
"They told me they had their shooter! I would never have let her go without a lawyer otherwise."
His parting advice to his daughter was: "You better start talking. Whatever they want to know, you best to tell them."
In the wee hours yesterday, after the long drive back to New York, Ashley Evans followed her father's advice - and detectives promptly arrested her.
Cops say she stood by as 19-year-old Rudy Fleming allegedly shot duFresne. Ashley plucked credit cards out of a purse stolen in the fatal holdup, and hid Fleming's gun inside a friend's apartment, cops charge.
Evans had no idea she had been charged with murder until a News reporter knocked on his door yesterday in a quiet suburban cul de sac surrounded by snow-dappled horse farms.
Sitting in his airy, plant-filled house in Cheltenham, surrounded by pictures of his kids with his second wife, Evans' emotions bounced wildly.
There was his anger at the detectives, sorrow that his eldest daughter got stuck without a lawyer - and fury at her for being anywhere near such a hideous crime.
"I'm in Maryland trying to live a quiet life," he said. "I'm just the father trying to figure out what happened."
Deserving and feeling bad for someone are too different things.
She was a radical, radical leftist. I remember seeing some of her work, she was type to hang a soldier in effigy.
People should know that when they read this.
Another Jemima Goldsmith type.
Please reconsider - your daughter is married and your son-in-law is working. All work is honorable. Consider if he were selling drugs, robbing old ladies - or killing for fun and finance.
Your daughter must have found some good qualities in this young man. I am assuming, you raised her with good judgement. Perhaps you could encourage your son-in-law to finish school and reach for the sky. Otherwise you will be estranged from your daughter and ?grandchildren.
Not preaching, just remembering.
OMG this poor man. I feel for him, what he must be going through.
People should know, when they read this, that she was a person out having fun, not doing anything wrong to anybody, going about her life, who was murdered. Her radical leftist views do not factor into the equation, IMHO.
So, sympathy is only offered to people of the conservative persuasion who are murdered? Nice logic.
Sometimes kids take the wrong path no matter how hard their parents try to instill them with the values and ethics they'll need to succeed and raise flourishing families in the world. Some kids just have to make the mistakes and learn the lessons the hard way. Sounds like your daughter learned hers.
Man. A story with no winners.
How very sad for all of them.
Bless you.
Click the Graphic J
Sorry, my previous post was intended for NoJoke, not speed_addiction.
"But you seem to believe that this actress was the same as some Iraqi car-bomber."
They both work to undermine us, whether it's people like her holding up Palestinian flags in anti-war matches, slandering soldiers at art exhibitions and trying to break morale or actually fighting against them.
Like I said, if someone that is an enemy of the US dies, I cannot grieve for them at all. Paul Wellstone was another one.
I feel bad for this father, not for Nicole or Rachel Corrie or Amy Biehl or the rest of the suicidal leftist cult.
I feel bad for her that she was murdered, but lost any burgeoning sympathy I might have had for her parents when they used her death to become poster-yippies for the gnti-gun lobby.
Nichole's murder illustrates two glaring problems in our country : (1) the total lack of judgement or control our youth are ENCOURAGED to indulge by the pop-psyhe types because it makes them more open to suggestion is detrimental to society as a whole (2) the fact that a gun was used to murder a woman in a city with gun control laws as strict as those in NYC only further illustrates the TRUISM that if guns are made illegal, only criminals will have guns.
It's sadly ironic that she followed the same ideology that made it so east for this pair od lowlifes to murder her.
Yep,
The wages of sin are death. What a senseless waste.
FH
Wow, you've got a lot on your plate. Prayers from Texas. And, many, many thanks to your daughter. My brother is coming home from Iraq this week, thank God.
"East" was SUPPOSED to be "easy". **Eyore voice** at least it was spelled right
I mean nothing ruins a cogent, "well thought out" posting like dumbass misspellings! ;-)
As for your other daughter...those clothes and diapers for your grandson are the most important things you can give. I don't know what relationship you have with her, but she's probably very grateful that her son is getting the things he needs.
As for your SIL...well, maybe prayer will help. It can't hurt. Maybe they'll both straighten up.
The worst part is that I did proofread it.
"Her problem is her mother didn't guide her right," Evans said.
Double-Ahhh. You're either there to raise your kids, or you're not. This piece makes him sound like he's in the running for Father of the Year!
Yes, he did the right thing in this instance, but did there even need to BE an instance? He's not the victim here.
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