According to police officers and a family spokesperson, a man from Texas who is accused of raping a 16-year-old used social media to lure the girl to a meeting. He then abducted the girl from school and drove her to a river so he could kill her. The reason he did all this was to prevent her from testifying against him in court. The man was interviewed on Monday and he said he simply wanted to prove his innocence to her but was overcome by ‘demons’ when they met.
The man is Franklin B. Davis and he has been charged with capital murder after killing Shania Gray. Gray was seen alive for the final time at Hebron High School in Carrollton on Thursday. On Saturday, her body was found at the Trinity River.
Police from Carrollton said that Davis has confessed to scheduling a meeting with Gray using lies and then driving her to a trail close to the river. When there he shot Gray twice with a .38-caliber pistol. The arrest affidavit said that Gray fell into the water and called Davis by his nickname, ‘Why, Wish?’ The affidavit also said that Davis confessed to stepping on Gray’s neck until she stopped breathing.
Gray met Davis after babysitting his two children. He asked her multiple times to babysit again but she refused. She told her grandmother that she was raped by Davis. Police believe Davis killed Gray because she was going to testify against him in the rape case. The rape trial was going to start in October. Davis was charged with four counts of sexual assault of a child. Gray was warned by Davis that he would kill her if he told anyone of the assault.
The arrest warrant states that Davis got a hold of Gray using social media while pretending to be someone else asking about the case. He used a pre-paid cell phone to schedule the meeting with her at the school on Thursday.
“I needed to get some kind of evidence, some kind of proof myself to show I did not have sex with her and that she’s lying,” Davis said in an interview with television station WFAA. “I was fighting demons. It was like a different person was in me. It wasn’t me.”
Davis is in the Dallas County Jail on $2 million bail. Gray had enrolled at the school that week and had been in class just two days prior to her murder. The school said that it was not aware of any threats against Gray until a police report was filed on Friday.
