Friends, family remember slain Williamsburg teen at candlelight vigil
Dozens of friends and family gathered Friday evening for a candlelight vigil to mourn a Williamsburg teenager found dead in a remote area of Isle of Wight County last week.
Aonesty Selby, 18, was found on an old logging path Jan. 13 by members of her family, who began searching for her when she hadn’t been heard from in a couple of days.
Attendees, some wearing shirts that read “Long Live Aonesty,” comforted each other during the vigil, signing messages on poster boards adorned with photographs of Selby and gathering to pray. The vigil was held at Yorktown Beach. According to Selby’s aunt, Jeanie Bailey, her niece loved the water and loved to swim.
At the end of the vigil, friends and family released several balloons into the night sky.
“Everyone had something they loved about her,” her uncle, Shoyn Sellers, said.
Though they were not biologically related, Sellers had known Selby since she was a toddler. According to him, his niece was an average teenager — not perfect, not bad, but a normal girl who “just got caught up.”
“Everyone has assumptions but at the end of the day, she loved life,” he said. “She lived life, too.”
The Isle of Wight County Sheriff’s Department said earlier this week that her family tracked her location and found her body after a friend realized Selby had shared her location data.
According to the sheriff’s department, surveillance data and information on her cellphone led them to charge 21-year-old Andarius McClelland of Newport News with second-degree murder. Authorities said that the two were in an “on-again, off-again” relationship but got in an argument, during which McClelland shot Selby. McClelland, who was arrested Tuesday night, confessed, the sheriff’s department said.
Selby grew up on the Outer Banks, but moved to Williamsburg in November to live with family and was attending Warhill High School, where she was a senior.
At the vigil, her math teacher at Warhill, Matthew Fleischer, said he noticed Selby’s “youthful energy” even during the short time he had her in his class. Selby was quick to make friends at her new school, he noted.
“She didn’t seem daunted by being in a new place,” he said.
Speaking to the assembled crowd, Sellers called for Selby’s death to not be in vain, beseeching the teenagers in attendance to understand that while their parents may fuss and seem strict, “it comes from love.”
The message, he said, is that young people need to be aware of danger, especially in an internet age. He also emphasized the importance of doing the right things like going to school and listening to one’s parents, because family will always be there for you.
“Parents aren’t supposed to be burying kids,” he said.
Sian Wilkerson, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com, 757-342-6616
