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Danielle Thomas (June 28, 2012) |
The man Danielle Thomas loved is being sought by New York police today in her death.
Police are looking for Jason Bohn, 33, last seen in Queens, N.Y.
Thomas, 27, was a graduate of Boyle County High School. Her mother, Jamie Thomas Bright, and grandmother, Juanita Hardgrove, live in Danville.
Danville police were sent by New York authorities to Bright’s home early Wednesday morning to break the news that her only child had been murdered.
In turn, Bright, who is Hardgrove’s only child, had to break the news that Hardgrove’s only grandchild had been murdered.
“Jamie and a dear friend and my brother from Lexington came to break the news to me,” Hardgrove said today. “They knew it would hit me really hard. She was ... she was my life.”
A spokesperson for the New York Department of Communications of Public Information said police in the 114th Precinct of Astoria, Queens, received a tip to check on a woman in an apartment on 33rd Street at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
“Upon arrival, police found a white female, 27, with trauma to her head. EMS responded, and she was pronounced DOA at the scene.”
Asked about a history of calls to the address, the spokesperson said a domestic (violence) history did exist.
On June 7, Thomas filed a complaint concerning her boyfriend and also reported an assault that allegedly took place May 24.
While at the station, Bohn “figured she was going to report him” and called Thomas’ phone, the spokesperson said. He made threats so heinous that he received an additional charge, and she was granted an order of protection.
Bohn was charged with assault and aggravated harassment.
Hardgrove said Thomas’ body is still in New York. An official cause of death has not been released, and there is no official report on any progress finding Bohn.
Hardgrove said Thomas was an exceptional person. “I don’t like people that brag, but she was very special. Good student and wonderful daughter and granddaughter and just a wonderful person,” Hardgrove said. “You would have loved her. Everyone loved her.”
Thomas was a saxophone player in high school during years the band went to state. She had a master of arts degree and had lived in Florida and worked for Disney as a financial analysis. She was a skydiver. She loved to travel. She had been to Australia and New Zealand and Paris where a man drew her likeness right down to her signature beauty mark. She gave that glass-framed work of art to her grandmother the last time they were together, only three weeks ago, when she was giving Hardgrove a once-in-lifetime whirlwind tour of New York City.
Thomas had moved with Bohn to New York a few months ago and taken a job as chief financial analyst with Weight Watchers.
She had taken her mother and grandmother on a Caribbean cruise in March as a birthday gift to her mother. Bohn was there, too.
Hardgrove said the two had met about a year ago at a ballgame in Florida.
“He is an attorney. I thought he was very smart. Brilliant. He had never been married, neither of them had ...,” she said.
“She was my only granddaughter. My life just centered around her.”
Thomas drove 15 hours to be with her mother and grandmother for Christmas.
“It was like she knew, somehow, that our time was short. She spent as much time as she could with us. She was like no one else God has ever created.”
Hardgrove said she believes God is a just God. She also believes God will give the family what it needs to walk through this pain, this loss.
She cannot know how just yet, she said, but somehow some good will come out of this. Maybe more light will be shed on the subject of domestic violence, and others will benefit from the unspeakable loss of her only daughter’s only daughter.
“I got an email from her, just the day before. She said, ‘All is well.’ I am hanging on to that.”
