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Neighbor who fatally shot Florida mom can’t yet be arrested under state’s ‘stand your ground’ law
June 06, 2023
A Florida mother was fatally shot outside a neighbor’s home over an ongoing dispute over children playing, but the shooter can’t be arrested until potential self-defense claims are ruled out under the state’s “stand your ground” law, The Associated Press reports.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said at a news conference Monday that deputies responding to an Ocala home Friday night on the report of a trespassing found Ajike Owens suffering from gunshot wounds. The 35-year-old mother of four was taken to an area hospital, where she died.
Owens and the woman who fatally shot her were involved in an ongoing feud since January 2021, Woods said, noting that deputies had responded at least a half-dozen times to the address in connection with the dispute.
“I wish our shooter would have called us instead of taking actions into her own hands,” Woods said. “I wish Ms. Owens would have called us in the hopes we could have never gotten to the point at which we are here today.”
The AP reports that “Woods said detectives are working with the State Attorney’s Office, and they must investigate possible self-defense claims before they can move forward with any possible criminal charges. The sheriff pointed out that because of Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law, he can’t legally make an arrest unless he can prove the shooter did not act in self-defense.”
Owen’s children were playing in a field near the shooter’s home on the night of the shooting when at some point the woman started yelled at the children and threw a pair of skates, striking one of the children, Woods said.
An argument ensued when Owens confronted the woman at her apartment before the woman shot Owens through the front door, authorities said.
Woods said the children who witnessed the shooting have not yet been interviewed by investigators because the agency wants them to be interviewed by child experts.
Woods said most of what investigators know about the incident is from the shooter.
“There was a lot of aggressiveness from both of them, back and forth,” Wood said of the shooter’s account.
“Whether it be banging on the doors, banging on the walls and threats being made. And then at that moment is when Ms. Owens was shot through the door.”
During a vigil Monday Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said she was seeking justice for her daughter and her grandchildren.
“My daughter, my grandchildren’s mother, was shot and killed with her 9-year-old son standing next to her,” Dias said. “She had no weapon. She posed no imminent threat to anyone.”
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Ron DeSantis is all-in on a war on “woke” strategy that he hopes to parlay into a ticket to the White House, but a conservative columnist is warning the Florida governor’s strategy could backfire.
Matt Lewis writes for The Daily Beast that DeSantis’ recent proclamation that “We will wage war on the woke. We will fight the woke in education; we will fight the woke in corporations; we will fight in the halls of Congress. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob” that channeled Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech shows the extent to which the Florida governor has made the war on woke the centerpiece of his political agenda.
“We get it. We get it,” Lewis writes. “You’re clearly doubling down on the fact that fighting woke-ism is your raison d'être. This is your Make America Great Again. This is your Build Back Better. But does casting opposition to woke-ism as DeSantis’s bête noire make sense, politically? I’m not sure.”
A recent USA Today/Ipsos poll support’s Lewis’ assertion.
The poll shows a split between those who view “woke” to mean being aware of social injustice, which is considered the Democratic party view of the term, and others who associate the term with political correctness taken to an extreme, which is how Republicans typically characterize “wokeness.”
According to the poll, 56 percent of Americans view the term to mean “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices,” and 39 percent consider it to be “overly politically correct and police others’ words.”
DeSantis isn’t alone in pushing an anti-woke agenda, Lewis writes, noting many other Republican presidential candidates who have expresses similar views.
But even Donald Trump sees the term getting a little stale.
“It’s gotten sick, and I don’t like the term woke, because I hear woke, woke, woke,” Trump said Thursday at a Westside Conservative Breakfast in Urbandale, Iowa.
“You know it’s like just a term they use half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.”
It doesn’t help DeSantis and fellow anti-woke Republicans that most people don’t even know exactly what the term means.
“It might even be interchangeable with terms or phrases like ‘liberal indoctrination,’ ‘identity politics,’ ‘political correctness run amok,’ or ‘Newspeak,’ Lewis writes.
“Maybe you call it ‘elite paternalism’ or even ‘liberal fascism.’ These ideas are not new, and it’s unclear why we should pretend that they are just because they have been given a new label.
“For broader appeal, why not say Florida is “where liberalism comes to die” or “where progressivism comes to die”?
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Raw Story reported last week that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) missed the vote for raising the debt ceiling, which she had opposed. But a reporter at Axios spotted her rushing up the steps of the Capitol just as the vote was being closed. She'd missed it and the press knew.
A new video from CNN showed it wasn't just the word of a reporter that observed Boebert racing up the steps, they got her on video.
A CNN producer was heard on video saying, "They closed it."
"They closed it?" Boebert shouted back.
"Yeah," the producer said. Boebert paused, but then continued running up the steps of the Capitol.
First, Boebert claimed that there was no such thing as the debt ceiling and that it was all "fake news."
"Tomorrow's bill is a bunch of fake news and fake talking points that will do nothing to rein in out-of-control federal spending," she said.
"No excuses," Boebert said on June 3. " I was ticked off they wouldn't let me do my job, so I wouldn't take the vote. Once again, Washington's power machine shoved a multi-trillion-dollar bill down our throats, refused to allow debate or amendments, disregarded everything we fought for, in January to actually allow representatives to do their jobs, and instead, they served us up a crap sandwich."
She claimed that she simply refused to be part of it. In fact, she tried to be a part of it and then missed it.
As a fact check, there were 81 proposed amendments, and 14 of those were either co-sponsored or even introduced by Boebert.
As it turns out, she did show up for the vote.
When CNN released the video of her racing up the steps, it called her office to ask for an explanation for the Twitter claim that it was a "protest."
"A spokesperson responded by providing a link to Boebert’s Thursday statement, which outlined her opposition to the bill but did not substantiate her subsequent assertion in the social media video that she had missed the vote on purpose," said CNN.
“I certainly wasn’t afraid to vote against the bill, as I have been advocating against it all week,” Boebert said in the statement.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki dragged Boebert while subbing for Chris Hayes' show Monday night. "You snooze you lose," the screen said.
"I can't stop watching that," Psaki chuckled.
News 9 Denver's Kyle Clark did his own commentary on the matter Monday, saying that Boebert had a note put in the Congressional record that she missed the debt ceiling vote because she was "unavoidably detained."
"Now she's saying she skipped the vote on purpose as a protest," said Clark. "Both cannot be true and Boebert knows which one of her claims is a lie. Congresswoman Boebert often gets a pass from the media for making outrageous and false statements because she does it so often. That's not fair to the Coloradans in her district or to the elected officials who do not blatantly lie to voters. I can hear you saying, 'Oh, all politicians lie all the time.' Except they don't. We have covered countless conservatives and progressives and everywhere in between, politicians who strive to tell the truth every day. They don't all offer up obvious, clumsy lies that insult the intelligence of voters."
He closed by saying that if a politician makes something up they will always call them out, but it "doesn't give anyone else the license to lie, even if they make it part of their personal brand."
"Here's why this matters," Jon Cooper tweeted. "Yes, it exposes Lauren as incompetent. But it also exposes her as a LIAR. Because she CLAIMED her no-show vote was a form of protest because the bill was a "crap sandwich.” She was so smug and so proud in another video claiming that she skipped the vote because 'they wouldn't let me do my job.' Gee. I thought her job was to vote."
"Every time a new Lauren Boebert joke goes viral a bunch of MAGA dipsh-ts tell me they gonna boycott my movies," said Liam Nissan™. The Twitter user's name is Liam and he drives a Nissan car. He is not the actor.
See the videos of Boebert and the commentary below or at the link here.
\u201cHere is a clip from that night outside the Capitol, showing Rep. Boebert running up the stairs as though she was trying to make the vote, and me telling her that it had closed already. \n\n*running up steps*\nMe: They closed it. \nBoebert: They closed it?\n*keeps running*\u201d— Morgan Rimmer (@Morgan Rimmer) 1685900230
\u201c#HeyNext Commentary: Giving Rep. Lauren Boebert a pass for lying about missing the debt ceiling vote does a disservice to her constituents and to elected officials who haven't made falsehoods their personality. #copolitics\u201d— Kyle Clark (@Kyle Clark) 1686013196
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