Teen's death a mystery
Akron Beacon Journal
Aug. 22, 2006
A scruffy gray-and-white cat lounged in the sunshine Monday outside Dwight David Donovan’s Kenmore home.
The cat is one of many strays, Donovan said, brought home by his 18-year-old daughter, Melissa.
On Saturday, police found Melissa’s body in a vacant house on Edgewood Avenue.
“I felt like the world had been pulled out underneath me,” Donovan said. “Her and I weren’t close, but this didn’t have to happen.”
Donovan said the last time he saw her was about a week ago when the two quarrelled.
The teen was found dead at about 10:30 a.m. at 613 Edgewood Ave. Police have not determined how long she had been there.
A man who ran onto the porch of the house to get out of the rain Saturday smelled a foul odor coming from inside the house, detectives said. The man called police, who arrived and found the teen’s body.
The girl was identified through dental records.
Detectives said it is not clear how Melissa died.
Investigators say she doesn’t appear to have been shot, and there are no clear signs of blunt force trauma.
Melissa’s death has not been ruled a homicide, but detectives are treating it like one until evidence shows otherwise.
The Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office did not rule on a cause or manner of death Monday.
Donovan said his daughter struggled all her life with schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Melissa turned 18 in January and then stopped attending Kenmore High School, he said. She emancipated herself from her parents and lived in the Edgerton Group Home for a few months before returning home to live with her father and mother, Veronica Donovan.
Whenever she did come home, Donovan said, she never stayed long.
“I kinda wish I’d said more, but what would it have done?” he asked, tears streaming down his face. “She had that independent thing going on.”
Donovan said she loved caring for wayward animals and that she loved to read.
“She used to come in here all the time,” said Norma Wagner, public services assistant at the Kenmore branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library. “She was a nice girl.”
Wagner said Melissa came in at least once a week. She was a member of First Glance, a local church-sponsored hangout for area kids. The group meets at the library on Thursday nights.
“She was very friendly and just a sweet girl,” Wagner said.
Melissa’s father, who is disabled, now wonders how he will pay for his daughter’s funeral. He said he will likely have to have her cremated.
“She was her own kinda kid,” he said, shaking his head.
