Serena Hamilton and her boyfriend thought they had found the perfect fixer-upper after moving to Richmond from Pennsylvania in December.
They closed on the 1,136square-foot house last Wednesday and had a large trash container delivered three days later so they could begin gutting the 1920s-era bungalow for renovation.
"We were just looking for something to fix up, to do it our way," Hamilton said yesterday outside the home in the 1400 block of Melton Avenue, near the southwestern tip of Oakwood Cemetery in the city's East End. "We figured we'd probably be in this area for five to eight years."
The couple could be forgiven if they changed their minds.
Hamilton found a man shot to death yesterday on her front porch, minutes after arriving about 7 a.m. to wait for the gas and water to be turned on.
"Welcome to the neighborhood," Hamilton said wryly. "To come home and find [a body] is not something that you expect."
Richmond police said they are investigating the man's death as the city's 20th homicide of the year. They identified him as Franklin Edward Baker, 26, of the 1700 block of Peter Paul Blvd.
"Everybody came out to see if they knew who it was," Hamilton said.
The Philadelphia native said she initially thought the man lying on her front porch and partially obscured by overgrown bushes may have been seeking refuge from the rain.
"At first I just yelled, and he didn't move," she said. "And I didn't see him breathing. So I went around the other side of the hedges and looked," and he was dead. He had been shot in the head.
Hamilton said she had stayed at the house during the day Monday but left about 7 p.m.
She and her boyfriend left the city of York, in south-central Pennsylvania, to move here for a job. The couple lived in a hotel for about a week until finding an apartment. They still haven't spent their first night on Melton Avenue.
"We're going to get a kitchen and bathroom [installed first], and a clean spot to put the bed," she said. "We just want to fix it up and live in it."
If her boyfriend's job pans out, "then maybe we'll stay," she added.
Despite the killing, Hamilton said she and her boyfriend aren't pulling up stakes. The slaying, residents advised, is an aberration in an otherwise quiet neighborhood.
Hours after detectives and crime-scene technicians swarmed the area, Hamilton walked peacefully across the street yesterday afternoon to greet the neighborhood mailman.
Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or mbowes@timesdispatch.com.
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