Jessie Foust ? a 25-year-old woman found murdered in her Wichita home Thanksgiving Day ? has a number of ties to the Ark City area, those who knew the woman said Tuesday.
Foust attended Cowley College and graduated with a nursing degree in 2005. She was a cheerleader on the college’s cheer squad.
"It makes me sick, it makes me really sick," Kristi Shaw, the college’s director of student life, said of Foust’s death. "For someone to do such a horrific crime is beyond my thinking. I can’t really conceive it."
Shaw was cheerleading coach at Cowley for eight years.
Foust and 26-year-old Pharon Adrian Jackson were found shot to death in their Wichita home on Thanksgiving. The couple had two young children who were found in the home unharmed.
Police believe theft was a motive for the crime.
Shaw remembered Foust as a fun-loving girl who did very well in school and was part of a team that placed second at nationals Foust’s sophomore year. Shaw has family living in the Ark City area and many of the 29 students who cheered with Foust over the course of two years remain in the area.
"A lot of her buddies, that I coached, are still living around here," Shaw said. "It was a tightknit group."
Shaw remembered the fun hairdos that Foust often sported.
"Her hair was a different color every week," she said.
Foust was set to graduate from Wichita State University this month and the school has announced she will be honored with a degree that will be given to her parents.
Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the case and prosecutors have filed two first-degree murder charges against Samuel Holton, 18, of the Mulvane-area in Sumner County. No other charges have been announced thus far.
