The Homicide of Ms. Devonna Walker
Part One
‘I was out there with her in one situation. And I actually called the police,” said LeSean Boles, Devonna Walker’s mother, “He had these dogs attack us, he came out calling us n****rs and have the dog attack us.”
from Facebook
The dog keeps barking aggressively sniffing and lunging at the woman on the ground. Her friend yells get your dog! get your dog! she is standing with her feet firmly planted on either side of her friend’s body laying face down, unmoving. Another woman screams at the person on the ground and for the benefit of all in the apartment complex she’s just playing, she’s just playing. The woman then makes a great show of dabbing invisible blood from her lip with a large white towel.
Devonna!
Devonna!
The friend yells trying to rouse the woman still motionless on the ground.
The video starts as the fight is already underway. It is a yelling match at this point - the white woman with her leashed dog yelling at two Black women she knows from the apartment complex. Snow is still on the ground but receded to the safety the side of the building; during the day it would be in part shade.
One black woman in a white top and dark pants stands on the sidewalk, listening to the yelling white woman. The other isn’t even in frame when the cellphone footage starts. That woman is Devonna Walker, she was 29 years old with three children and she had just over three minutes to live.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa is a mid-sized midwestern city surrounded by fields and interstates old highway 30 - the Lincoln Highway - cuts through town right next to the Quaker Oats plant - Cargill and ADM and General Mills also run out of Iowa’s second largest city. There are days the sickening smell of ADM mixes with the syrupy smell from GM or Quaker and you have to hold your breath as you drive through town.
At the 2:15 mark on the video a white man yells from the apartment: Shut up you fucking n***er!
You can hear Devonna out of frame start to yell, she comes running toward the apartment where the white woman is walking with her dog toward the open apartment door where the man is standing. Devonna knocks the woman off her feet and the white lady starts to push back. The white man comes out of the doorway a little more and looks like he is going to push Devonna back, all the while just yelling and screaming. Then all of a sudden the man lunges at Devonna in the struggle and then she steps back a couple steps, she starts to stumble away from the door, the white man, white woman and their barking, barking dog.
It’s the 2:40 mark on the video.
Then she falls face down on the ground parallel to the sidewalk and doesn’t move again.
At the 3:03 mark of the video there is a brief but clear glimmer in the white man’s hand; it’s the blade of the knife. He and his wife continue to yell at Devonna as she lays there bleeding out.
The man says nothing. There is no indication to anyone - even his wife - that he just stabbed her. He doesn’t render aid. Doesn’t tell her friend hey you might want to get an ambulance. Doesn’t appear concerned with anything but getting his wife - and you can see now their daughter - indoors.
Maybe he can just pretend he didn’t just drive a (what looks like) four inch blade into a woman’s side and that she isn’t bleeding out in his front lawn, or that he didn’t just scream the n-word so loudly it echoed through the complex.
It’s more likely the white man stood there holding his knife (maybe still warm from Devonna’s insides) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on January 2nd, 2023 at 6:24 pm figures she fucking deserved it that Black bitch and anyway, he’s white, he’s safe, nothing to worry about, she attacked him right?
At this point I am uninterested in any legal arguments you may be formulating in your head. Devonna Walker is dead and she was stabbed by an angry racist white man in front of the world to see.
The Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks made a smart move. He came out with a video explaining the incident, what his office was doing to put together a case, and he used the word “homicide” which is a manner of death not a charge but is significant from the county’s lead law enforcement official: Devonna was killed she didn’t just die. He also said that the use of racist slurs by the man and perhaps his wife were being factored into his charging decisions.
He promised a decision by the end of this month.
More coverage, a link to the actual video and other links to fundraisers for Ms. Walker’s family here from Black Iowa News.
I can’t stop thinking about her three children and the horror of her being murdered probably in front of them. I’m in shock. I live in Iowa City. I hate that this man hasn’t been arrested and charged. It’s so racist and wrong. 🤬💔