‘I am afraid of what’s next’: Woman called police, got court order before murder-suicide
A UNC Health Care clinic worker feared for her family’s safety and called police multiple times in the months leading up to a fatal double shooting Monday, court records show.
Victoria Amanda St. Hillaire, 28, of Burlington was killed Monday morning outside the UNC Family Medicine building where she worked on Mayfair Street in Durham.
Lequintin Ford, 33, also was found dead in the parking lot shortly after 8 a.m.
St. Hillaire was a certified medical assistant and had only worked at the clinic since September, UNC Health Care spokesman Phil Bridges said. The clinic, which focuses on primary care and has roughly 35 employees, is closed for the rest of the week.
A preliminary Durham police investigation showed Ford shot St. Hillaire and then shot himself. The couple had been in a “prior dating relationship,” police said. Alamance County court records show Ford was under a court order prohibiting him from having contact with St. Hillaire, her mother and her minor children at the time of the shooting.
The relationship had been difficult for at least the last three years, with St. Hillaire also seeking domestic violence protective orders against Ford in 2015 and 2018. St. Hillaire voluntarily dismissed the 2015 order; the 2018 order expired in May 2019.
Court records also show Ford had several pending charges against him in Alamance County, including three charges of felony stalking, one charge of misdemeanor stalking, three violations of a domestic violence protective order and one charge of misdemeanor harassing phone call, according to court records.
Stalking, harassment
The latest incidents started in early October, when St. Hillaire sought an emergency protective order against Ford in Alamance County.
In the Oct. 9 “ex parte,” or emergency, filing, St. Hillaire wrote that she was afraid for her safety and that of her family. In the request, she said Ford had hit her in the leg with a bat in January 2015 and also had choked her. Ford had threatened to commit suicide, she said.
On Oct. 8, she told the court, Ford stalked and harassed her family, and she responded by deleting her email address and changing her phone number and Facebook information.
“Lequintin showed up to my home unannounced giving a bag of kids clothes to my mom,” she wrote. “Again that same evening, he came back to the home banging on (the) front door around 7 p.m. asking to speak. Police came after he left.”
On Oct. 9 — the day that St. Hillaire got a temporary protective order — Ford showed up at the UNC Health Care clinic where she worked and tried to force his way into her car.
Ford was “being disrespectful and causing a scene,” she said. “I am afraid of what’s next and the safety for my family.”
Protective order
The temporary protective order required Ford to surrender his firearms, ammunition and concealed carry permit to the county sheriff and prohibited him from seeking a gun purchase permit. Alamance County Sheriff’s Office officials were not immediately available to answer questions about any firearms that Ford turned over.
The order also prohibited Ford from contacting St. Hillaire or her family, and barred him from showing up at St. Hillaire’s home, her child’s afterschool program and school, and her and her mother’s workplace.
He also was ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor once he bonded out of jail, to only leave home between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. for work, and to move in with his sister in Greensboro. The address that Ford provided for his sister in Greensboro could not be verified Tuesday.
But court documents and arrest records show Ford continued to harass and stalk St. Hillaire and her family, and on Oct. 19, was accused of stalking them at the family’s home in Burlington. The arrest warrant said Ford showed up at the home on Oct. 9 and repeatedly banged on the windows. He was charged Oct. 19 with breaking one of those windows and with three misdemeanor violations of the domestic violence protective order and three felony counts of stalking.
On Oct. 21, Ford was charged again with misdemeanor stalking after he followed St. Hillaire, rented a car and drove by her home at odd times of the night, and banged on the home’s windows, a record shows. He fled before police arrived, it said.
More charges were levied against Ford on Oct. 23 after he attempted to talk with St. Hillaire when her car broke down on the side of the road, records show. The next day, he was charged again, this time with making harassing phone calls after he allegedly called St. Hillaire more than 40 times from a private number.
At an Oct. 28 hearing, Ford and St. Hillaire agreed to continuing the domestic violence protective order restrictions. Ford’s hearing on the pending charges was scheduled for Dec. 11 and Jan. 7.
St. Hillaire’s death on Monday marked the fourth official domestic violence homicide in Durham County this year, according to the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
