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| Photo Credit: AP. |
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Jason Arnie Owens helped carry his father’s casket to the hearse, then turned to embrace a relative. He never made it to the cemetery.
As mourners
gathered outside a northern West Virginia funeral home on Aug. 24, two
plainclothes officers with a fugitive warrant swooped in from separate
vehicles, called Owens’ name and shot him dead, spattering his 18-year-old
son’s shirt with blood as horrified loved ones looked.
“There was
no warning whatsoever,” family friend Cassandra Whitecotton said.
In the blink
of an eye, stunned friends and family already mourning one member lost another.
Now, they want answers — not just why Owens was shot but why the encounter
happened the way it did.
Law enforcement
officials aren’t explaining much right now, citing an ongoing investigation.
Owens, 37, was wanted on a fugitive warrant, but the U.S. Marshals Service
hasn’t said what it was for. The agency also said in a statement that he had a
gun when members of a fugitive task force approached. Multiple witnesses
contend that’s not true.
Whitecotton
and others who stood just feet away said Owens was unarmed, had been hugging
his aunt, Evelyn O’Dell, and was fired on immediately after his name was
called. Witnesses also dispute the U.S. Marshals’ assertion that first aid was
performed right away, before emergency medical services arrived.
“They yelled Jason’s name. They just said
‘Jason’ and then started firing,” Whitecotton said. “There was no identifications
they were U.S. Marshals — anything. They did not render this man any aid at
all. Never once they touched him to render any aid whatsoever.”
As relatives
prepared for services Friday for Owens, a state police investigation of the
shooting was underway. But patience in the community is wearing thin.
Relatives
and supporters protested outside the Harrison County Courthouse last week,
accusing law enforcement authorities of overreach in the death of Owens, who
was white. A Facebook page called Justice for Jason Owens has swelled to about
800 members — more than half of the population of Nutter Fort, where Owens was
killed.
Underlying
the unanswered questions is whether some boundary of decency had been crossed
in arresting a man in the midst of burying his father.
“If they’ve been searching for someone and
they finally figure out where they are, they’re going to get them,” said Tracy
L. Hahn, a Columbus, Ohio-based security consultant who retired after 32 years
in law enforcement, including as deputy police chief at Ohio State University.
Hahn said she knows agencies that have gone to funerals but have waited until afterward to approach the person.
“There must
be some extenuating circumstance that they felt the urgency to arrest him then
instead of waiting, if there was some risk factor, an escape risk or something
like that,” Hahn said.
Family
members aren’t so sure. They say it only adds to their sense of disrespect that
the agencies involved feel no obligation to address their questions.
“We want to
know why you would do this in front of his family,” said Owens’ cousin, Mandy
Swiger. “And what gives you the right to do that to an unarmed man?”
Acting U.S.
Marshal Terry Moore said he couldn’t answer questions during the investigation
and messages left with state police weren’t returned.
It’s not
clear whether video exists from police bodycams, a police vehicle dashboard or
the funeral home itself. Unlike major cities where detailed incident reports
and video footage are released after fatal police shootings — sometimes within
hours — that rarely happens in West Virginia.
West
Virginia law exempts police from having to release video footage during an
investigation. And the U.S. Marshals Service office said it did not write a
detailed incident report about the shooting, referring to the news release that
withheld Owens’ name and other details.
Owens had
been in trouble with the law before. He was sentenced in 2018 to three to 13
years in prison for fleeing a Harrison County sheriff’s deputy and trying to
strangle him during a scuffle. He was released on parole in April 2021.
But Swiger
said he committed a parole violation “for not checking in just once. And that’s
why he promised his mom after the funeral he would turn himself in.”
Whitecotton
said she was smoking a cigarette after the service when an SUV came flying down
the side street where the hearse would pull out.
“It about
hit me, so I jumped back up on the curb and kind of looked at him like, ‘What’s
your problem?’” she said. A man in shorts and a T-shirt jumped out, leaving his
door open.
Swiger said
a white truck with another plainclothes officer inside almost hit her mother’s
vehicle as the truck sped into the parking lot. Swiger said Owens was shot from
different directions and estimated as many as 40 people were in the area. She,
too, said she didn’t see a gun in Owens’ hands.
Some
mourners instinctively rushed toward Owens after he fell to the ground, Swiger
said, but were told by one of the officers, “You step back or I’ll shoot you.”
Whitecotton
said she has lived in much larger cities such as Houston, Dallas and Fort
Worth.
“Never in my
life have I dealt with anything like this,” she said. “I would expect it there,
honestly. But not here.”