Mother of Springfield murder victim seeks help in unsolved case

The mother of a murdered Springfield woman wants anyone with information on the crime to come forward, after more than a year has passed without an arrest in the case.

Candance Prunty, 26, was found shot to death in her West Mulberry Street home in October 2015. No one has been arrested.

She was shot in her head and neck, according to a police report.

Family members found her on the kitchen floor after she didn’t show up to get her children from school. Prunty had three young boys, ages one, four and seven at the time of her murder.

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“We just can’t imagine somebody would want to do any harm to her,” she said. “She never hurt anybody.”

Prunty’s mother, Patricia Beard, and Springfield Police believe people in the Miami Valley may have information that could be useful to the case and lead to an arrest.

“We are pleading with the public for information concerning the brutal murder of my daughter,” Beard said. “I believe someone has probably heard something … people talk.”

Columbus Police took a subject with a possible connection to the crime into custody just hours after the murder, the Springfield News-Sun previously reported, but it did not lead to an arrest.

Springfield Police have a person of interest in the case, Detective Ronald Jordan said, but the investigation has been stalled by people who haven’t cooperated with officers.

“That individual knows who they are,” Jordan said of the person of interest. “And I hope you hear this interview and you take a long look at yourself and you think about the pain that you see that you’ve put this family through.”

“I ask that person or anyone that they may be associated with to do the right thing,” he said.

Any new information could be enough to make an arrest, he said.

“It could be the breaking point that we need to prosecute an individual or bring them to justice.”

Beard wants anyone with information to imagine themselves in her position, she said.

“God forbid that this should happen to any of your children, but you would want justice for your child,” she said.

She hopes whoever is responsible for the murder is overcome by guilt and decides to come forward.

“To the person or persons that had anything to do with this or did this,” she said. “I pray that God will convict you in such a way that you can’t sleep until you make this right.”

Prunty was a hard worker, Beard said. She earned a degree in business administration from Clark State Community College in order to provide for her children.

She had moved from her home on Wittenberg Avenue, she said, into the West Mulberry home with her older sister before the murder. Prunty had been harassed at the previous home she said, by someone throwing boulders through her windows.

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