Streicher

Owensby

        The anger and frustration wracking Cincinnati since the suffocation of a suspect in police custody two weeks ago comes down to seven minutes.

        At 7:49 p.m. on Nov. 7 outside a Sunoco in Roselawn, officers radioed that they had Roger Owensby Jr. in custody. One reported that they had sprayed his face with chemical irritant.

        Seven unexplained minutes later, this call: Send medical help.

        Somebody started CPR. EMTs called for paramedics. Officers called for supervisors.

INFOGRAPHIC The final moments of Roger Owensby Jr.'s life

        Mr. Owensby, 29, left the parking lot in the back of an ambulance. Though firefighters on the scene already thought he wouldn't make it, they continued pushing down hard on his chest all the way to University Hospital.

        He was declared dead in the emergency department at 8:47 p.m., six minutes after arriving at the hospital and 51 minutes after officers realized he had somehow become unresponsive.

        His parents did not make it from College Hill in time.

        The fury over the Election Night death promises to fuel this latest Cincinnati police/community relations controversy well beyond when the dragged-out presidential contest is decided.

        City Hall's in an uproar over alleged information withholding. Some Afri can-American groups are urging protests and an end to what they think was a fatal example of ever-present racial profiling.

        Everybody wants to know about those seven minutes.

        The city eventually will learn more, perhaps as early as this week. The five officers involved have not said anything yet; they are asserting their constitutional right to remain silent.

        It's tough enough to deal with being involved in somebody's death, Fraternal Order of Police attorney Don Hardin said, and these guys have that compounded with finger-pointing and City Hall rhetoric. But they might change their minds and talk if calmer heads prevail, he said.

        Until then, embattled Chief Tom Streicher can respond to his critics only by saying what he thinks probably happened. And that is that officers had been keeping an eye out for Mr. Owensby, whom they knew only by his nickname, “L.A.,” since he had escaped from one of them during an arrest about a week before.
       

Extra officers around

               Officers were on increased patrols in the area of Seymour Avenue and Langdon Farm Road that night, looking for drug activity. A store videotape shows Mr. Owensby starting to be handcuffed. Then for some still unexplained reason, he bolted instead.

        Out of the camera's view, officers chased him, caught him and handcuffed him.

        How the man suffocated, the chief does not know. His homicide detectives are doing the best they can to find out, he said, by focusing on other information, like physical evidence and statements from witnesses, some of whom insist officers slammed Mr. Owensby to the ground too hard. The detectives likely will meet again this week with Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen.

        The coroner weighed in with some initial information: Mr. Owensby had not swallowed any crack, as was rumored, though crack and pot were found at the scene; he did have traces of marijuana in his blood; and the pressure in his head or neck while he asphyxiated caused tiny blood vessels to burst in the whites of his eyes.

        Investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. attorney's office and FBI also are working the case. Their involvement a week ago pleased representatives of Cincinnati United Black Front, the NAACP and Baptist Ministers Conference, all of which see Mr. Owensby's death as the latest in a string of deaths involving Cincinnati police suspects.

        The list, since 1995, now totals 13 — all men, all African-American.

        The folks that hang out in Sam's Drive-Thru next door to the Sunoco still rehash what happened to Mr. Owensby, the little guy with short dreds who bought kids snacks.

        They wear his face on their sweat shirts.

        They're mostly young, male and African-American. And they're mostly skeptical of what the police did to their friend.

        “OK, he probably shouldn't have run from them,” said Jermaine Hill. “But couldn't they have found a better way to catch him?”

        The spot — at a busy intersection in a mostly industrial, commercial neighborhood across from Cincinnati Gardens — has been a problem hangout. Officers were there that night because residents complained of possible drug activity. Councilwoman Alicia Reece has repeatedly urged extra attention to the Seymour Avenue area.
       

Officers moved loiterers

               Sam's owner Yaser Salameh, a Jordanian national, said he has called police many times when young people would hang out in front of his place and block the drive-through lane. He suspects some of them are selling drugs. Officers always come and move everybody out, he said.

        But things have been better lately. Police suggested he put up a no-trespassing sign. He did, about two months ago, and has made only one or two calls to police since, he said.

        All Mr. Salameh saw the night Mr. Owensby died was two officers running from his parking lot to the one next door. He didn't think anything of it. Mr. Owensby, a drive-through regular, had been in earlier that day. But he had to go next door for something Mr. Salameh does not carry, the health drink he bought just before he was approached by police.

        Questions about the whole night, and particularly the seven minutes, really hit hard with Mr. Owensby's parents, Roger Sr. and Brenda. It is difficult for them to see their son as anything but a father and U.S. Army veteran who was trying to get his life together.

        They had paid $520 to bail him out of jail about two weeks before he died. He had been charged with assaulting a worker at Pepperoni's in Bridgetown during his 9-year-old daughter Myiesha's birthday party. The charge was dropped.

        They talk about how he took 20-some youngsters trick-or-treating.

        “You tell me a person that's supposed to be so bad would do that,” Roger Owensby Sr. said.

        The older Owensbys hope for a big change out of their son's death, change like an end to what they see as a backslide in race relations in Cincinnati.

        Maybe if something changes, the death of “Little Bit” will keep serious meaning. They called him that, even though he was 29 and grown, because he weighed only three pounds when he was born. His father remembers holding him with just one hand.

        Mr. Owensby Sr. thinks about what he'll do whenever he comes face-to-face with an officer who was involved in his son's death. He said he won't be nasty, he just wants to talk. To ask one question about the seven minutes.

        “Will you answer me this?” he plans to say. “Why is my son dead?

        “I don't think I'll get an answer.”

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