On January 11th, 1992 a 12-year-old girl named Shanda Sharer was tortured, stabbed, and burned alive by a group of four girls. Shanda attended middle school and began dating a girl whose ex-girlfriend became jealous of the two. This ex-girlfriend was named Melinda Loveless, and was 16 years old at the time of the murder. Melinda Loveless, along with her 3 friends: Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence lured Shanda into their car and then proceeded to torture her for 10 hours straight. Shanda endured immense torture before her death, such as being stabbed multiple times, had Windex sprayed into her face and wounds, her throat was attempted to be cut, and was beaten again and again. Melinda Loveless was the mastermind behind all of this and both she and Laurie Tackett carried out the most torture on this innocent 12-year-old girl.

Hope Rippey, who sprayed Windex in Shanda's wounds and contributed greatly to the torture, served only FOURTEEN years of her original sixty-year sentence. Toni Lawrence served nine years. Laurie Tackett was released in 2018, having served 25 years in prison. What's more astounding and the most disgusting miscarriage of justice I've ever seen is the fact that Melinda Loveless was released from prison in 2019, only having served 26 years in prison. This is absolutely disgusting as this horrible human should rot in prison forever and yet instead, was given a life to live after taking an innocent 12-year-old's. 

This is absolutely horrifying that these cold-blooded murderers were allowed to be released from prison. Melinda Loveless and Laurie Tackett showed absolutely no remorse for their crimes, going as far as to bragging to their friends about what they had done the day after the murder. They need to be retried and resentenced and put back in prison for the rest of their lives.