WAKE COUNTY — WAKE COUNTY: The family of a pregnant woman plans to distribute additional fliers this weekend in the areas surrounding the scene where she was killed more than two weeks ago.
Last week, friends and family passed out more than 2,000 handbills in an effort to seek information about who killed Jenna Nielsen in the early-morning hours of June 14.
This Saturday, they plan to distribute another 6,000, half of which are in Spanish.
Family members have indicated that community volunteers are welcome to assist if they wish, Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue said Wednesday. They will meet at Carolina Pines Park, 2305 Lake Wheeler Road at 8:30 a.m. Saturday.
Nielsen, a 22-year-old mother of two who was eight months pregnant, was delivering USA Today newspapers when someone stabbed her behind the AmeriKing Food Mart at Lake Wheeler Road and Centennial Boulevard.
Nielsen's family is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the case.
Police have no suspects in the case but have released a composite photo of a person of interest wanted for questioning.
He is described as being in the late teens or early 20s, standing about 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighing about 120 pounds. He had black hair pulled into a ponytail and wore a dark-colored sleeveless shirt and baggy denim shorts.
Anyone with information about the case should contact the Raleigh Police Department's tip line at 919-227-6220.
Family members tell WRAL they are still very hopeful that the case will be solved.
When Jenna Nielsen didn’t arrive home from work by 6 a.m. on Thursday, June 14, her husband, Tim, started to worry. She was three weeks away from giving birth to the couple’s third son, so Tim expected that any minute, the phone would ring, and someone would tell him Jenna had gone in to labor.
By the time he was headed for the door to look for her, detectives were standing in his driveway. Someone found her car abandoned in front of a service station on Lake Wheeler Road. They found her body behind the convenience store. She and the baby, who they were planning to name Ethen, were dead.
“She was the mom,” Tim said recently from Utah, where he was attending Jenna and Ethen’s funeral. “She pretty much kept all of us together.”
Jenna was 22. She and her family lived in Fuquay-Varina, and Jenna had taken a job delivering newspapers for USA Today so she could stay home with the children – 3-year-old Schyler and 11-month-old Kaiden – while her husband was at work. She followed the same route every day, and Tim said the AmeriKing Food Mart, across from the Farmers Market, was one of her first stops.
Police were called around 5 a.m. Another newspaper delivery man noticed her car – the interior light was on and papers were strewn on the pavement beside her Honda.
Otherwise, details are scarce. Police will not disclose how Jenna died, and refused to confirm or deny media reports that someone found a knife near the scene of the crime the day she was killed. Early on, they characterized the killing as random – a point with which Tim fervently disagrees – but would not elaborate on their definition of random. "That person was there for a reason,” Tim said. “It wasn’t random. I know it wasn’t random.”
Tim is frustrated with police, and claims that nearly everything he knows about the crime and subsequent investigation from the media. “We are completely left in the dark, pretty much,” he said. “At this point we kind of have to keep our hopes up that one of these days one of the phone calls we’re going to get is, ‘Hey we have somebody in custody.’”
Despite whatever frustration Tim has toward investigators, they share one common goal: that someone with information will come forward and help police solve this murder
A man was seen near the murder scene at around 3:30 a.m. the morning Jenna was killed, and police released a composite sketch within a day of the murder. At that time he was spotted, the man, who police say may be Hispanic, was on foot. “We just ask that anybody out there that may have information who might have seen something to please call,” said Sgt. J.J. Mathews, assuring that callers may remain anonymous. “The Raleigh Police Department is committed to finding the person responsible for this senseless act.”
Tim, too, believes that someone out there knows something and begs for that someone to do the right thing. He seeks justice, but knows full well an arrest will never provide it.
“When they do find this person they better pray to God he is behind a foot of bullet resistant glass and have two dozen cops in front of him,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m going to get any gratification if and when they find someone but, I mean, at this point it’s kind of what we’re all hoping for.”
