I'm a friend of Shayla's. My name is Tanya. I am helping Art with the children and helping with his investigation on what happened, he is currently at the funeral home.

The tox report came back with muscle relaxers and painkillers, plus her depression meds. The official cause of death was a gunshot in her chest. We still don't know where she got the gun since she didn't like guns and refused to have them in the house due to her short time in the military.

We haven't found out much. She destroyed every picture of herself, and ones where she was with someone else she cut herself out. Her drawings are gone, every bit of her existance has disappeared except for her four children.

Shayla was a wonderful person. There has been a lot of critism from her neighbors, coworkers and even family. I am telling everyone the same message:

Shayla was sick. She had severe postpartum depression. No medician was working, no theapy was working. With Layla's illness and several other things that was going on she couldn't take it. I don't want people to think she was a bad person for taking her own life. No one listened to her when she said the medician wasn't working and she thought of suicide at every turn. She couldn't help it. Postpartum depression is a dangerous disease and people need to open their eyes to it.

Shayla worked for the Humane Society as a volenteer. She spend more then forty hours a week there working with the animals and helping cruelty investigations. She even opened her home to rescue animals, rehabed them and them found them loving homes, often she became attached to the animal and they never left, like Kovu her little black cat. Now Kovu is depressed and his vet said that he might not survive without Shayla. If that is the case Kovu will be cremated and taken up to Salem with Shayla, he belongs with her in life and the afterlife.

She also opened her heart to a little girl from Iraq. She faught long and hard to get the little girl out of her situation and to improve it. She spent a lot of time teaching her children, her oldest already spoke Spanish almost as well as English. Layla was in the middle of reading Where the Red Fern Grows with Shayla, Ravven was learning piano and Joeseph was a beautiful infant boy.

We don't know much and I do not know when the funeral is going to be as Art hasn't gotten back yet. Either he or I will post when it is.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts, prayers and concern. It does mean a lot to everyone in Shayla's life, especially Art. He read the comments before he left and cried at most of them, this is really difficult for him, more then anyone would know. There is one person in particular we will be dealing with seperatly.

Rewston: Thank you for the lovely journal. It means the world. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Tanya