MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – Friday 78-year-old Francis Mae Davis was murdered in the Myrtle Beach Mall parking lot and her two daughters are asking the community to help find her killer.
“She was 79 tomorrow,” said Shelly Wells, Davis’s daughter. “Tomorrow was her birthday. She was a good person, you couldn’t ask for a better person,” said Michele Gagne, Davis’s other daughter.
Davis had a big family five grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.
If that didn’t keep her busy enough she also worked as a cashier at the Food Lion in Carolina Forest just for extra play money her daughters Gagne and Wells say.
They also say she would have done anything for anyone.
“She would have said ‘take my car; just let me get out. The keys were in the ignition,’” said Wells.
Horry County Police say the death is under investigation as a homicide. Davis’s daughters say their mother was killed for her purse. Wells says she left her mom for 15 minutes in the mall parking lot in broad day light. She thought her mom was sleeping in the car when she returned.
“That’s when I tilt her head back and saw blood everywhere out of her mouth,” said Wells.
Wells and Gagne say if it was something like a heart attack they could have handled it, but they say they can’t believe someone murdered their mother for her purse.
“I keep thinking ‘I’m having a nightmare’ and ‘this didn’t happen,’” said Wells.
So now instead of planning a 79th birthday party, they have to make funeral arrangements. But they’re not speaking just because they want people to know how great their mother was.
“I want whoever did this to know the kind of person was that they killed and maybe somebody out there saw something, even a minute little thing they saw at the mall that can lead us to the person that did this,” said Gagne.
Horry County Police have not announced if they have any suspects in this case.
If you have any information the family as well as law enforcement ask that you call the police tip line 843-915-8477.
