“We really, honestly, just want to let the [Harris] family know we are so sorry,” Natera Stewart said.
Two families are forever connected by one violent act.
“I want to personally say to them from one mother to another, I certainly don’t know what it’s like to totally lose a child, but I do know what it’s like to go through hardships,” Pamela McBride said while fighting back tears.
McBride is the mother of Alan Anthony Stewart who, according to police, admitted to pushing 24-year-old Jessica Harris down a flight of stairs, stabbing her to death and leaving her body in a parking lot outside an abandoned east Columbus apartment building.
Harris had been reported missing since Tuesday. Her car was discovered by police Thursday evening just off of Livingston Avenue, which was in the same area that her body was found Friday morning.
“I still don’t believe it, you know what I mean,” McBride said. “I’m still shocked about it.”
Shocked because that man, she says, wasn’t the son she knew.
“It’s not him…it’s not him,” she said.
Stewart’s sister, Natera Stewart says her brother wasn’t himself. He was seeing a psychiatrist while dealing with a divorce. But, she says family was always there for him.
“I would talk to him on the phone and just tell him ‘Tony, it’s going to be OK, it’s going to be fine – you just have to keep pressing through this and we’re here to talk to you’,” Stewart said.
McBride says the father-of-two, who had served five years in the National Guard and recently re-enlisted, seemed to slowly be giving up.
“I did notice a difference in his behavior,” she said. “I did notice a difference in the way he was acting.”
To the family of Jessica Harris, the family of Alan Anthony Stewart say they apologize and they’re praying for them.
“I’m so, so very sorry about this,” McBride said.
And, as for their relative who is now charged with murder, they say they’re relieved to know that he confessed to his crime and is taking responsibility.
“He took responsibility,” McBride said. “I know that he’s going to be man enough to hold on to that responsibility.”
And the mother wants her son to know that she will always be by his side.
“I’m right here, son,” she said. “I’m right here.”
McBride says the family was at the hospital following her son’s attempted suicide when he jumped off a bridge at I-270 and Broad when they learned of what he had confessed to. She says she has not yet had a chance to talk to her son, who is still recovering from his injuries at Grant Medical Center.