The Homicide of Ms. Devonna Walker
Part 2 - Voluntary Manslaughter, disorderly conduct - FBI declines hate crime
Iowa Courts online show the history of violence in Teslik’s past. In 2020 he was arrested and pled out for domestic assault and violating a restraining order - there is an entire page of violations - ranging from using tobacco as a minor (in the early 2000s), drug offenses, restraining orders and increasingly violent offenses (and of course he didn’t pay child support) - the disorderly conduct charge makes the voluntary manslaughter feel even more a slap in the face.
Voluntary manslaughter in Iowa up to a 10 year prison sentence and no more than $10K in fines.
According to Iowa Code:
707.4 Voluntary manslaughter.
1. A person commits voluntary manslaughter when that person causes the death of another person, under circumstances which would otherwise be murder, if the person causing the death acts solely as the result of sudden, violent, and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a person and there is not an interval between the provocation and the killing in which a person of ordinary reason and temperament would regain control and suppress the impulse to kill.
2. Voluntary manslaughter is a class “C” felony.
3. Voluntary manslaughter is an included offense under an indictment for murder in the first or second degree.
I would like to take a beat here and remind everyone that Devonna Walker was in the act of walking away - out of the frame of the video and Shane Teslik screamed from the comfort of his transom “you f’ing n****r!”
Iowa Courts online show the history of violence in this man’s past. In 2020 he was arrested and pled out for domestic assault and violating a restraining order - there is an entire page of violations - ranging from using tobacco as a minor (in the early 2000s) to violent offenses and a history of mental disorders.
Let’s talk about this part of Iowa Code:
“…acts solely as the result of sudden, violent, and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a person and there is not an interval between the provocation and the killing in which a person of ordinary reason and temperament would regain control and suppress the impulse to kill.”
There is nothing sudden about the violence Teslik has displayed since his first arrest in 2002. There is nothing sudden about the escalation from burglary to simple assault to domestic assault in this man’s past.
How many times can a person take being called a ‘f’ing n****r’ before they break? From the accounts of Teslik and his lady friend, they are just racist as hell and have been ugly and racist at Ms. Walker for some time.
He egged her on just because he could - he is probably shocked as a white man that he was even charged.
I am unclear how Linn County got to this decisions based on the 15 minute video - the voluntary manslaughter - disorderly conduct? He let her bleed out. His wife/girlfriend, whatever, didn’t appear to know he stabbed her as she continued to let her dog bark and lunge at the dying Ms. Walker.
