“You learn who your friends are,” Shanna said. “I am fortunate enough to live in an amazing community and have an amazing family. The kids know they’re loved. I would never want anybody to go through this. It’s terrible to witness.”
In her only TV interview, she told WJAX on July 5, 2022, that she and Jared had shared “happy moments” as parents of “the two most beautiful children in the world.”
Acknowledging that court records showed a five-year-long custody battle following their split in 2015 (the Times-Union counted close to 300 entries and motions in their divorce file), Shanna told the station, “Anytime divorce comes into any situation, it’s messy. It just is. I will say that I think that we both love our kids.”
But eventually, there was a standing Wednesday date with the twins for whichever parent didn’t have them that week. The night Jared was killed, Shanna said tearfully that she remembered her son saying it was “‘a good date night'” as she tucked him in.
Shanna said she was “shocked” when she found out her ex was dead. “I fell to the floor,” she recalled, “because I was devastated.” She said she didn’t know what had happened to Jared, but she was cooperating with detectives and didn’t expect to face criminal charges herself.
“Even though we didn’t always get along,” Shanna said, “he was still the father of my kids.”
(E! and NBC News are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)