Homicide victim's family looks for answers

She has nightmares about her brother.

He's lying on the road. Afraid and alone, he's dying. She can't reach him.

When Jessilee McCann wakes up, the dream is real. Her best friend really is gone.

Shaun McCann, 27, was killed Dec. 6.

He was found outside his former apartment in the central city, bleeding to death in the crosswalk as children made their way home from school.

It was Hamilton's sixth homicide of 2012.

"It's a tragic and traumatizing thing," Jessilee, 25, told The Spectator Friday.

Speaking publicly for the first time since his death, the McCann family remains grief-stricken and without any clues.

They don't know how or why he died, and how his longtime friend came to be charged.

Steve Corbett, 25, now facing a second-degree murder charge, turned himself in to police the night Shaun died. Corbett's girlfriend, Kathleen McKenna, 30, of Hamilton, has also been charged with being an accessory after the fact.

Police say the two men had an altercation inside a multi-unit apartment — a place they shared up to a week prior to the incident. McCann had moved out of 51 Blake St. and had just stopped by to pick up some belongings, the family says.

Tenants who were home at the time of the incident told The Spectator they didn't hear a peep from the first-floor unit.

In an attempt to cope, Jessilee created a Facebook group called The. Voice. For. Families, for homicide victims. People from across the country have signed on to share their pain and memories.

She also writes to Shaun every day and carries his picture. He leaves behind a second sister, 21-year-old Angel.

"I just want to make sure no one ever forgets him. He was such a great guy," Jessilee said.

She said Shaun had a tremendous sense of humour. He loved the Terminator and did a hilarious impression of Ace Ventura, she adds.

He once walked from Hamilton to Cambridge just to see his mother, Lisa, on her birthday.

When he arrived, he flung open the door bellowing the Proclaimers hit song, 500 miles.

"It's a cherished memory for my mother," Jessilee said.

When asked how their mom was coping, she said: "My mother's not the same. She's never going to be."

Jessilee says the family had a long relationship with Corbett. When his mother died at a young age, Lisa stepped in to take him under her wing.

"He would call her 'Mom,' and that's the part that eats my mother the worst," Jessilee says. "She fed him, helped him and took him in."

Now her only son is dead. He was her world.

"I'm angry," Jessilee said. "I'm so angry."

rgrover@thespec.com

905-526-3404 | @RosieSpec

Read More @ Source

Criminal Stories Here