CHARLOTTE (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – Where do we find forgiveness?

The most obvious answer is probably church, on a Sunday morning, somewhere between the sermon and the Scriptures.

For some, it is spoken gently at the foot of a grave.

Search can also take you to letters on a keyboard or stories on a page.

“I wanted to emphasize that a little more,” Shalisa Jones said as she typed.

For Shalisa, she learned about forgiveness from her older sister, Ericka.

“She forgave, I forgave,” Shalisa said. “A lot. A lot.”

The two fought and teased each other like all siblings do. Ericka was the oldest and laid back, and Shalisa…

“She admired me. I like telling everyone what to do. I would tell her what to do, even though she was the eldest,” Shalisa laughed. “(Did she listen?) Yeah, if she didn’t, we fought!”

Ericka was always quick to smile or sing.

“She was always trying to sing, no, she couldn’t sing,” Shalisa joked.

Ericka had two children and loved them.

“Yeah, especially his daughter, the spitting image, she’s his twin,” Shalisa said.

Now, Shalisa would give anything to hear her sister’s laugh or her off-key singing at karaoke.

“Yeah.”

It was 10:30 p.m. on the evening of December 22, 2023. Ericka was along South Tryon Street in Charlotte. She was heading home when she was hit by a driver, who ran and left her on the side of a local road. When the ambulance arrived, it was too late.

“I missed the first call. I got the second call: I was like, what? It was surreal,” Shalisa recalls.

The next day, police arrested Matthew Sean Rowley. He later admitted his guilt to hit-and-run and a few other charges. Since pleading guilty, he has never been tried. Instead, he was sentenced in Mecklenburg County Court to 45 days in jail and probation. During her sentencing, it was the first time Shalisa saw the man who killed her sister. When she stepped in to give a victim impact statement, the words she said were not for her, but for Ericka.

“It wasn’t even my case, no,” said criminal defense attorney Kelsey Lee. “It’s not something you see in court.”

“The first words I spoke spoke on behalf of my sister. I had to let her voice be heard,” Shalisa recalls.

“It’s such a rare reaction when someone has hurt you this much,” Kelsey said.

“She didn’t blame him, as many times as we argued, she acted like nothing happened. So if she was here, I know she wouldn’t hold a grudge if she had survived this,” Shalisa said.

“I will absolutely, absolutely remember it for the rest of my career,” Kelsey said.

“I told him, I tell you, I forgive you. But I forgive you for me and for my family,” Shalisa said.

“Seeing the forgiveness stopped everyone in their tracks and made everyone emotional,” Kelsey said.

“I told him again, just in case he didn’t hear it the first time, I forgive him,” Shalisa said.

Where she was left is a small roadside memorial to Ericka. It’s been a year and time seems to have sped up and sped up all at once.

“I never pass this street without looking. To say hello, I’ll see you later or something like that“, Shalisa said.

Where the unthinkable happened, Ericka showed her little sister what to do.

“Well, that’s his story,” Shalisa said as she typed.

Shalisa writes Ericka’s story. It’s partly about how she died, but mostly about how she lived.

She passes his memorial every day.

“I stop and say, I’m about to go talk about you, girl,” Shalisa said.

When we seek forgiveness, sometimes it’s not exactly where we thought it would be. We see it in unforgivable circumstances, in courtrooms and in broken hearts. Wherever it is, it has the power to transform, like changing a story of loss… into a story of love.

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