LITTLE ROCK — The woman found dead in a vacant southwest Little Rock home early Tuesday had been squatting in the property that used to belong to her grandmother.
The death of Alexis Esaw Khabeer, 25, was ruled a homicide hours after her body was found in the 5903 Hutsell Road house she had known since she was 7 years old, and had lived at “off and on” for most of her life, according to her grandmother Velma Esaw.
Esaw said she sold the property and left Little Rock in March, but that Khabeer, recently separated from her husband of two years, told her that she was out on the street.
“She’d gotten back on drugs ... she called and I told her ‘It’s not my house anymore,’” Esaw said. “She said ‘it is my house’ ... I know she was mixed up and everything, but she said ‘I’m going over there cause I have nowhere else to go.’”
Khabeer’s drug use exacerbated a long-term battle with mental illness, according to Esaw, who had her granddaughter committed five years ago after she suffered from delusions of “talking with Jesus” on the doorstep of their Hutsell Road home.
According to Esaw, there were no utilities on at the two-story brick home.
Neighbors said they had seen Khabeer intermittently over the past few weeks, and knowing Esaw was now living in Ohio, didn’t know what to think.
Khabeer often knocked on neighbors’ doors, asking to borrow ice or water. On occasions, neighbors said, they saw her there with her 3-yearold son.
The house’s windows were open Wednesday afternoon, including a front bedroom where children’s toys and playing cards were strewn across the stained carpet.
“[Khabeer] was out there walking around in 100-degree temperatures with that baby,” Esaw said. “But being there since she was six or seven years old, she felt like it was still her house.”
The man who found Khabeer’s body had only known her for five days.
Jimmy Marshall, 26, said he’d met Khabeer at an Exxon gas station last Wednesday. He said she told him that she was on the street and was four months pregnant.
Marshall said he offered her help, giving her rides and even letting her stay with him and his sister one night. Marshall said he had plans to see her Tuesday morning at her home.
When she didn’t answer his text messages, Marshall said he went over and cracked the door open, and found her bleeding.
He ran outside and called police, who said Khabeer died after suffering a “trauma” to the head, and that her death was ruled a homicide after a preliminary autopsy by the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis said Wednesday morning that she couldn’t comment on other specifics and said that detectives did not have a suspect.
Pulaski County Coroner Gerone Hobbs said he couldn’t confirm that Khabeer was pregnant. Davis could not be reached by phone Wednesday afternoon.
Khabeer’s death is the 26th homicide this year.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/26/2012