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Re: صورة للمجرمة التى قتلت بالشاكوش السودانى اسحاق سليمان بجاكسون فيل (Re: انور التكينة)
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Quote: Five years ago, Isaac Gideon Siliman came to the United States with great faith in his new homeland.
The Sudanese refugee reunited with his brother and long-lost friends and found a job in Jacksonville at Swisher International, where he would volunteer for extra shifts to save enough money to retrieve his wife and children.
On Saturday, his promise of a better life was shattered when Siliman, 37, was beaten to death with a hammer in his Southside apartment during a robbery.
The slaying brings the number of immigrants killed in Jacksonville in the past five years to at least 20. Most were in robberies, a Times-Union report found this year.
Siliman was the second refugee to be robbed and killed this summer on the Southside, sending further ripples of fear through the refugee community.
Police found his body in his home at the Lighthouse Bay Apartments at 8090 Atlantic Boulevard.
The violence frightened the community of Sudanese refugees who live in Jacksonville. Like most of them, Siliman fled Sudan as war tore his country apart.
“That’s why he came here, for safety,” said Siliman’s brother, Paul Oyet, said Monday as he cried with friends and family members at his Lighthouse Bay apartment, just steps from the scene of his brother’s killing.
But after escaping bloodshed in Sudan, Siliman fell victim to what his family and friends are calling an act of senseless violence.
Police charged Merlin Williams Jr., 32, and Ashley Nichole Jerrell, 23, with the murder and armed robbery in the case. Lt. Larry Schmitt of the Sheriff’s Office said one of the suspects knew Siliman.
An arrest report said Siliman was pepper-sprayed and also subjected to a Taser. He was also repeatedly beaten in the head with a hammer. Police said Siliman’s vehicle was stolen and his credit cards were used to purchase several items.
Police found Siliman’s car and the suspects a few hours after the slaying with the help of at least one resident.
Williams, of the 2100 block of St. Johns Bluff Road South, and Jerrell, of the 10200 block of Belle Rive Blvd., are being held in the Duval County jail without bail.
The death is the third homicide at the Southside apartment complex this year.
Hari Adhikari, a refugee from Bhutan, was fatally shot in a July robbery. Authorities believe he was targeted specifically because he was an immigrant.
Fred Otim, a long-time family friend in Sudan who later helped Siliman in Jacksonville, said he believes Siliman was targeted for the same reason. Siliman, he said, never had a problem with anyone.
“He is all the time working, doing double shifts to maintain his family over here,” Otim said.
Oyet, 29, said Siliman was like “a mother and father” to him and his siblings in their younger years, washing them, feeding them and taking care of them while his parents worked. In the 1990s, the family split apart. Oyet was sent out of the country so that if the violence escalated, at least one family member would survive. Another one of the siblings is believed killed in the war.
Siliman stayed with his parents, who still live in Sudan today, until about 2001, when he fled to Egypt. He married and had two children, a young girl and a 9-month-old baby conceived when he went back to visit his family in Uganda. He had recently become a citizen and applied to have his wife and children join him in Florida.
Once his body is released, the Sudanese community is hoping to raise enough money to send it back to Sudan so his parents, his wife and his children would be able to bury him there.
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