Friend reflects on woman killed

“She was my friend about one year.”

With that, Sierra Johnson, 24, began describing the scenario that unfolded for Sheena Rose Devine, the 30-year-old Libby woman whom Johnson found dead on Thursday, Oct. 6.

Johnson said that she had met Devine at the Elks, where Devine worked as a bartender.

She also knew Trevor J. Mercier, the man charged with deliberate homicide in Devine’s death. Mercier had worked with Johnson’s boyfriend at Kootenai Truck Repair, but quit about two months ago.

On Oct. 5, the night before Johnson found Devine in her house on Third Street, Johnson had visited Devine, who said someone had been throwing rocks at her car that night.

“She asked if he (Mercier) was home. She thought he was the one doing it,” said Johnson, who lives in an apartment next door to Mercier.

Johnson said she and Devine talked and smoked cigarettes, and Devine showed her the dents in her car, a gray Toyota Matrix.

She was there about 30 minutes and left.

“When I was walking home Wednesday night, I saw a guy in the bushes with his hood on,” Johnson said. When she arrived home, she texted and then called Devine to let her know that someone was in the bushes near her home. She never heard from her friend again.

Although she didn’t know who it was that night, Johnson now suspects that man was Mercier.

At around 10 a.m. the next day, Johnson went to Devine’s home to visit. Her 4-year-old daughter answered the door and told Johnson that her mother was sleeping.

Johnson went to Devine’s bedroom, but she wasn’t there. She found her lying on the floor in the living room.

“She didn’t look very good,” Johnson said, adding that she wasn’t sure if she was dead at that point but called 911.

Johnson talked about an earlier incident when Mercier assaulted Devine in February.

“She didn’t want to be with him after that, but he kind of pressed it,” Johnson said. “They broke up, were together for a couple of weeks and then she broke up with him again.”

Devine and Mercier were not in a relationship when Devine died, Johnson said.

“I think she was afraid of him. She was pretty not happy with him,” she said.

Johnson said Devine was “always happy. She was a great person. She loved her kids,” 2- and 4-year-old daughters who are now staying with their father in Choteau, according to Johnson.

“She was a good friend.”

As far as her next-door neighbor Mercier, Johnson said “he wasn’t really a friend, just kind of like ‘that person you know.’ We borrowed movies from him, but we really didn’t hang out together.”

After she called 911 the morning of Oct. 6, Johnson said she was afraid to go home until Mercier was in custody. He was arrested as a “person of interest” later that day and charged with deliberate homicide the afternoon of Oct. 7.

Johnson said she wasn’t surprised by the arrest.

“There was no other person that would ever want to hurt her.”

Caleb M. Soptelean can be reached at 293-4124 or by email at csoptelean@thewesternnews.com.