‘She drove me to this’ – Seattle woman, 85, charged with murder, assault of Kenyan sisters

An 85-year-old woman has been charged with premeditated first-degree murder and assault after dreadfully shooting her roommates.

Beverly Jenne shot Janet and Angela Oyuga following a misunderstanding last month.

According to investigators, Jenne killed Janet before targeting Angela when she arrived home from work on December 19 in the Seattle-area suburb of Federal Way.

According to Police, dispatchers received a 911 call from a woman in her 30s around 1 am on the day of the gruesome incident to report that she had been shot in her home.

Officers arrived at the scene to find the Oyuga sisters shot multiple times with one dead, local station Komo News reported. The other victim was rushed to Harborview Medical Center in critical but stable condition.

The Q13 FOX News reported that initially investigators were confused as to who the shooter was, but police had since named Jenne as the suspect.

According to documents obtained by The Seattle Times, a revolver with six spent cartridges had been found on Jenne’s bed. 

Authorities also found a bloody hammer and screwdriver in the kitchen. 

Jenne was found as she tried to strangle herself with an electric cord, Koma News reported. 

Jenne had owned the house she has been sharing with Oyuga since 1979 -that’s some 40 years.

However, the house was foreclosed and sold in November 2019. The new owner entered into a lease-to-own the house agreement with the Oyuga sisters.

As it’s true with Africans and African Americans, the Oyuga sisters who are Kenyans allowed 85-year-old Jenne to share the house with them until she finds a place so she wouldn’t be homeless.

That arrangement, however, would lead to the fatal shooting of the sisters with one dead following a disagreement.

Investigators found a note inside a gun holster in Jenne’s car that said the dead Janet “was not a nice person. She drove me to this.” 

“I had no one to help me,” the note also read, “I think she was getting ready to evict me, and I’m 85 and have no place to go.”

Jenne also requested a cemetery plot in the note before finally disclosing that her will could be found under the front seat.

Jenne is now being held on $1 million bail. She would be booked into jail when she is released from the hospital after she attempted to commit suicide.

“When they came in, they did not know that the lady was still there,” Pastor Festus Gumbo, who knew the sisters told Q13 Fox News.

For him, the sisters’ cultural upbringing played a role in allowing Jenne to stay in the home.

“The African culture teaches you to extend grace to those who need it, support the needy, more so the elderly, the children and the sick,” he explained.

“And they thought it wasn’t going to take a long time before the previous owner of the house to move out, little did they know that the previous owner had plans of not wanting to move, going by what happened.”