A woman who called Columbus home was beaten to death in her Irving, Texas, home last week.
Though her assailant is in jail, it offers her family little solace.
Pamela JoAnn Wilson-Malla”s estranged husband, Ram, found her dead in her apartment at about 10:30 p.m. on June 21, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Pam had been driving her husband”s car, and when she didn”t return it and didn”t answer her phone, Ram went to the apartment.
“If he had not went over there and found her, there is no telling how long she would have been laying there,” said Pam”s sister, Barbara Wilson Porter.
Porter lives in New Braunfels, Texas. Wilson-Malla”s living siblings reside in various areas, and over the years she had become distant.
“I didn”t (talk to her) very often at all,” Porter said. “She”d go a year at a time without contacting any of us.”
A day after the brutal slaying, Kevin Monroe Amos, 41, called police to turn himself in for the crime.
Porter said Amos was “a friend of a friend” to her sister and was living with her since he had nowhere else to go.
“It”s just the most bizarre story you”ve ever heard in your life,” Porter said.
Porter said Amos hit Wilson-Malla in the back of the head seven times with a hammer.
“He said he didn”t mean to do it. He said he just snapped,” said Porter, who has been calling Irving police regularly to check on the case. “She didn”t deserve to die like that.”
Amos has been in and out of jail for the past several years.
“He should have never been let out of jail in the first place, and she would still be alive,” Porter said.
Now, Porter said, he is back where he belongs.
Wilson-Malla grew up in Columbus and graduated from New Hope High School in 1982.
Her parents, now deceased, were Birdie Mae Wilson and Boyd Wilson. They owned Little Giant Grocery in New Hope.
Over the years, Wilson-Malla worked in auto sales. She also loved music and books, Porter said. She was 46.
Former Columbus resident dies in car crash
Another former Columbus resident died last week, in a car wreck.
Ashli Armstrong, 20, who as born in Columbus, died June 19 in Dunn, N.C.
Her parents were Sara-Jane Skiwski and Kenneth Armstrong; she is the granddaughter of Dr. Jacob and Nancy-Jane Skiwski of Columbus.
Armstrong and her 27-year-old boyfriend, Chris Smith, were killed when their motorcycle was hit head on, NBC-17 in Raleigh, N.C., reported.
According to the TV station, police charged the driver, 25-year-old Samuel Brown, with two counts of felony death by motor vehicle, and he likely was drinking.
Armstrong was going through nursing school.
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