Transient Held as Probe Continues in Slaying of Girl, 14

A transient from Florida is being held in lieu of $1-million bail while police investigate the strangulation of a ninth-grade girl whose body was found wrapped in a blanket in the basement of an abandoned Santa Monica building, authorities said Wednesday.

The body of 14-year-old Shevawn Geoghegan, a Santa Monica resident who attended a private school in the San Fernando Valley, was found last Thursday.

The man who police believe killed her, 22-year-old Jason Allen Ballis, was described by Shevawn’s aunt as a friend of the victim who had threatened the girl in the past.

The district attorney’s office charged Ballis only with a count of receiving stolen property and said the murder investigation was continuing. A preliminary hearing on the stolen property charge is scheduled March 12.

Although prosecutors would not comment, Santa Monica Police Lt. Gary Gallinot said Ballis is the prime suspect in the slaying. He was being held at the County Jail.

Shevawn’s father, Ed Geoghegan, last saw his daughter Feb. 24, accompanied by Ballis, who had stayed at the Geoghegan home in the past, according to her maternal aunt, Lynn Allen.

When Shevawn didn’t return home that night, Geoghegan filed a missing person’s report, Gallinot said.

Last Thursday afternoon, Geoghegan drove to a deserted mental health clinic in the 1500 block of Euclid Street, where he had been told that Shevawn was staying, and found a pair of boots that he believed to be his daughter’s, the lieutenant said. The father called police and waited outside while officers searched the building, eventually stumbling on the girl’s body in the basement, Gallinot said.

Earlier that day, police had arrested Ballis and a 16-year-old girl from Texas on suspicion of carrying concealed knives, the lieutenant said. The 16-year-old was transferred to Eastlake Juvenile Center and is not a suspect in the slaying, he said.

Gallinot said Shevawn had apparently “been socializing with a whole group of people that were hanging out in the abandoned buildings in town.”

Her aunt insisted that Shevawn was not a runaway, just a teenager who fell in with the wrong crowd.

The girl’s parents “accepted her friends,” Allen said. “Shevawn took care of people and brought them home.”

On the day she disappeared, she told her father that she was going to the store, Allen said. “The last thing she said to him was, ‘I love you, Dad.’

“It’s a terrible tragedy,” the aunt said.

At North Hills Preparatory School, Shevawn was remembered as a studious ninth-grader who loved art, said office clerk Miriam Flores.

“She was a good girl, she was friendly, and she talked to everyone,” said Flores, her voice cracking. “Why did it happen?”