‘Half my family is gone’: Mom mourns Iowa family found dead at Mexico resort

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“Life is not going to be the same without her,” Beth Fry added after finding out that Amy Sharp, her husband Kevin and their two kids were found dead in Mexico early Friday.
Brian Powers/The Register

CRESTON, Iowa — The only place here large enough to hold the shock and grief engulfing this town will be Southwestern Community College, perhaps in the gymnasium.

That’s where mourners will gather for the funeral of a local family of four — parents Kevin and Amy Sharp and their children, Sterling and Adrianna — who went missing during their Mexican spring break vacation and were found dead Friday in their resort condo in Akumal.

Foul play isn’t suspected, but that hasn’t eased the pain of beloved relatives, friends and neighbors rocked by the tragedy.

Amy Sharp’s close family gathered on a chilly Friday afternoon at the home of Beth Fry, Amy’s mother.

“Life is not going to be the same without her,” Fry said, overcome with grief as she stood in the bitter wind. “Half my family is gone.”

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But then the mother regained her composure.

“We’re determined. We have love and support and family and friends and we will get through this. One way or another, we will.”

She leaned on her older daughter, Renee Hoyt. Amy Sharp’s cousin, Jana Weland, stood beside them.

Other relatives circled around in the garage — nursing beers, numb in grief, sharing funny memories and trying to cheer each other up.

It was surreal, they said, as if they were watching some TV crime drama rather than their own lives as friends and family walked up with sagging plastic bags full of donated food and other items.

Kevin Sharp had been a salesman for the family beer distributor, Southwest Distributing Co.

Amy Sharp worked from home as a dental-claims specialist for Principal Financial in Des Moines.

Daughter, 7-year-old Adrianna, “was our fashion stylist,” said her aunt, Hoyt.

“Our diva girl,” added her grandmother, Fry. “She ruled that family.”

Sterling, 12, was comparatively quiet. But he was an avid athlete and sportsman — baseball, swimming, fishing, hunting, etc.

“His dad and him are a team,” Fry said, slipping into present tense.

The Sharps, both of whom took classes at Southwestern, by all accounts were two of the biggest Spartans fans in town. They welcomed basketball players into their home for Christmas dinner and other holidays.

As Spartans men’s basketball coach Todd Lorensen prepared to play that night in Danville, Illinois, competing in the NJCAA Division II championship playoffs, his mind drifted to the Sharps.

“I consider them friends,” he messaged. “They were to be here watching us play. … This family is an instrumental part of our Southwestern family, and we are all grieving their loss.”

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The Sharps also were rabid Iowa Hawkeyes fans.

They loved just about every sport imaginable.

“They traveled six days a week for those kids’ sports,” Hoyt said.

“They lived life on the fly, let me tell you,” Fry said, managing a smile.

This would have been the family’s second trip to Danville to cheer the Spartans.

It was their absence for the weekend that turned increasing worry in Creston into sheer panic, triggering Thursday night’s intense manhunt via the U.S. State Department.

This tragedy touches nearly all of Creston.

“Have you ever seen family trees that the branches go every which way?” Hoyt said, waving her hands above her to illustrate.

That was the Frys, Sharps and Baileys here. In that way, this family of four represents a loss for “most of the community, one way or another,” Fry said.

Not to mention that Fry herself is a popular waitress at Mario’s, the local bar and grill. Another relative runs a hair salon.

Hoyt not only was Amy’s sister but also was a high school classmate of Kevin’s. And her husband, Glen, was the guy who helped him catch the racing bug.

Kevin Sharp served in Glen’s pit crew for stock car races on the dirt track in Corning.

The family thought there was no way that Kevin Sharpwould actually begin racing himself. He was too much the businessman. Not a gearhead in the least.

“Wouldn’t even know a wrench,” Hoyt laughed.

But he got behind the wheel, loved it and went on to win trophies. He handed out his distributing company’s hats to winners, which turned out to be the most coveted trophies.

Sharp wasn’t going to race more than a couple times this year because of the family’s devotion to baseball and other sports.

Kevin and Amy Sharp had been married more than 16 years. They tied the knot in Vegas.

They met when Kevin began hanging around the Fry house for Sunday afternoon backyard volleyball games. Then he tagged along for a Fry trip to a Cardinals game in St. Louis.

What had been planned as a modest family vacation became a raucous road trip with a rental van full of Amy’s invited friends — including Kevin.

“We loaded (the van) up and had the time of our life,” Fry said. “Her and Kevin kind of got together that weekend.”

And that’s how the family lived: constantly on the fly.

Sterling and Adrianna didn’t even know they were going to Mexico until they were at the airport and getting on the plane — one more example of the family’s sense of adventure.

But now, the travel has become a somber homecoming, as relatives streamed back to Creston. The horrible day Friday played out exactly a month before Amy Sharp’s 39th birthday.

Her stepbrother in the Navy was flying in from Virginia Beach.

Kevin Sharp’s parents also had been on vacation and were en route.

Powers Funeral Home is making the arrangements for the funeral late next week at Southwestern.

Follow Kyle Munson on Twitter: @KyleMunson

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Investigators raid Cambridge Analytica’s London offices

(Reuters) — Investigators from Britain’s data watchdog searched the London offices of Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm at the center of a storm over a href=”https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/20/facebook-and-mark-zuckerberg-face-investigations-over-cambridge-analytica-data-privacy-allegations/”allegations it improperly harvested Facebook data to target U.S. voters.

About 20 officials, wearing black jackets with “ICO Enforcement” on them, arrived at the firm’s central London offices on Friday evening soon after a High Court judge granted a search warrant sought by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The officials concluded the search around 0300 GMT on Saturday. “We will now need to assess and consider the evidence before deciding the next steps and coming to any conclusions,” an ICO spokesperson said in a statement.

The officials, who were let into the building by security guards, were seen checking books and papers through the windows of the second-floor offices on London’s busy New Oxford Street, a Reuters witness said.

Elizabeth Denham, head of the ICO, sought the warrant after a whistleblower said Cambridge Analytica had gathered private information of 50 million Facebook users to support Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

Britain is investigating whether Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, did enough to protect data.

U.S. lawmakers on Friday asked Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to come to Congress to explain to explain how the data got into Cambridge Analytica’s hands, adding to pressure on the firm, which is under fire from investors and advertisers.

Separately on Friday, Britain’s Guardian newspaper said a former Cambridge Analytica political consultant had accused the company’s management of misleading the British public about work it did for a pro-Brexit group before the vote to leave the European Union.

Brittany Kaiser, a business development director at the company from 2014 until earlier this year, told the Guardian that Cambridge Analytica carried out data-crunching and analysis work for Leave.EU, while publicly denying it was doing so.

Arron Banks, a major donor to Leave.EU, told the newspaper that Leave.EU did not receive any data or work from Cambridge Analytica although the UK Independence Party, which also campaigned for Brexit, gave the firm some of its data which the firm analyzed.

“But it was not used in the Brexit campaign. Cambridge Analytica tried to make me pay for that work but I refused. It had nothing to do with us,” Banks was quoted as saying.

Efforts by the ICO to investigate Cambridge Analytica had hit a snag on Thursday after a judge adjourned its application to search the British consultancy group’s office by 24 hours.

U.S. and European lawmakers have demanded an explanation of how the British consulting firm gained access to the data in 2014 and why Facebook failed to inform its users, raising broader industry questions about consumer privacy.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that his company made mistakes in mishandling data and promised tougher steps to restrict developers access to data.

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