Avalisa Morris, 26, spent all day cooking in her Queens home on Saturday, preparing Caribbean dishes like oxtail, goat, and rice and peas for a friend's surprise birthday party. Within 24 hours, she was dead, having been shot by an unwanted guest who crashed the St. Albans party to confront a female guest.
The shooting occurred after the unidentified killer was forced out through basement door of the two-story home around 4:30 a.m. "She was at the door, and the people that were fighting went outside," her cousin, Larrissa Whyte, who was at the party, tells the Daily News. "And she closed the door, and she was standing by the door to make sure that they didn't come back in." On the other side of the door, Morris's murderer was fighting with other guests, and fired at least two rounds through the door. Morris died at the scene from gunshot wounds to the head and abdomen, the Post reports.
Morris, worked at a Capital One branch in Queens, was born in Jamaica and had lived in the U.S. for over a decade. At a family home in Springfield Gardens, loved ones grieved in shock. Spencer Grant, Morris' great-uncle, described her as "so friendly and so, so courteous. Every time I seen her, it was always a hug and a smile. I never saw her angry." Investigators are still searching for her killer.
