First Posted: 7/31/2013

ST. PAULS — A 53-year-old St. Pauls man is recovering from stab wounds made by the same man who shot and killed his friend, Jennifer Espey Ellinger, on Monday.

The assailant, James Ellinger, is dead, having killed himself on Tuesday in a home in Harnett County, according to Robeson County Sheriff Kenneth Sealey.

Sealey did not want to release the name of the man, whom he said had been friends with Jennifer Ellinger for about a month, but said he was treated and released from Southeastern Regional Medical Center on Tuesday morning.

The man was attacked by James David Ellinger, Jennifer’s ex-husband, when he came to the home at 15568 U.S. 301 North, above the Megabucks Convenience Store, on Monday. Jennifer dialed 911 from the home at about 9:30 p.m. but when police arrived she had been shot and Ellinger was gone, Sealey said.

A search for Ellinger, who was charged with first-degree murder, ended Tuesday when Ellinger first barricaded himself inside a Fuquay-Varina home and then shot himself. According to Sealey, Ellinger was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at about noon, shortly after Harnett County sheriff’s deputies surrounded the home in an attempt to talk him into surrendering.

It is unclear whose home Ellinger was he killed himself.

Jennifer, an employee of the Robeson County Sheriff’s Department since October 2010, was remembered by Sealey as someone who “always had a smile on her face and something kind to say.”

“She enjoyed her job and she enjoyed working with the girls in the records division,” Sealey said. “She was an excellent person to greet people when they came to the door.”

Jennifer was one of several in her family involved in Robeson County law enforcement. Her father, Tommy Espey, worked his way up the ranks to captain at the St. Pauls Police Department before coming to the Sheriff’s Office, where he retired as a lieutenant in 2009, Sealey said. Jennifer’s brother, Tommy Espey Jr., works as a magistrate for the county.

Sealey has asked that the department, and Jennifer’s family, be kept in prayers. Jennifer has three children, ages 22, 18, and 14.

Comments on photos on Jennifer’s Facebook page have asked for the same, with friends and family leaving condolences to her children and parents on photos that show them hugging and laughing.

After 5 p.m. Tuesday, the phone at the St. Pauls Police Department was still ringing — for what seemed to Hazel Walters to be the 100th time that day.

“Girl, you didn’t know?” she said to the caller. “I’m sorry.”

Walters said the phones at the station had been “blown up” by people who are still trying to get their heads around the murder of Ellinger, a woman Walters remembers as a young girl when her parents lived just down the street from her family.

“She was a good girl,” she said. “It’s real sad.”

Walters also knew Jennifer through her mother, Lou Espey, who worked in the town’s office for 29 years, 17 of those as clerk. She was concerned for Lou, who also lost a son, Billy Espey, in a car accident several years ago.

It’s something Dawn Clayton said the family “never really got over.”

“I feel so bad for her parents,” Clayton said Tuesday afternoon, just hours after she learned of her friend’s death. “It’s just hard. A hard situation. I just can’t imagine what her kids and her parents are going through.”

Clayton’s son Joseph in 2010 was the recipient of the Billy Espey Memorial Scholarship, something the family started to honor his memory.

Clayton says she hasn’t begun to think of how she will keep Jennifer’s memory alive.

“I was in complete shock,” she said. “I’m still in shock. She just sent me a message last week and I don’t even know if it’s still on my phone.”

Clayton said she grew up with Jennifer in Second Baptist Church. She had known her husband, too, for about 20 years and said she never saw him become violent.

“James was always a fun, happy-go-lucky person,” she said. “He liked to cut up, he liked to joke, he liked to have fun.”

Clayton wished Tuesday she had a minute to pull up her friend’s Facebook page, just to see her face.

“It’s been a hectic day at work,” she said. “I don’t even want to deal with going home and thinking about everything.”

She said the first thing she would do is read a “testimony” that Jennifer had written about how God had changed her life.

“I would pull it up and read it beforehand and it would give me goosebumps,” she said. “It’s going to have even more meaning now.”