Shequita Lewis, 33 and known as Quanna, was found with a gunshot wound to the chest in her North Church Street home in Kalamazoo on July 15, 2019. She was taken to a nearby hospital and died of her injuries. A mother of nine who had run for the Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners in 2018, she was described as a community advocate.

Investigators arrested 36-year-old Darien Gilleylen, the father of two of Lewis’s children, and charged him with open murder and felony weapons offenses. According to testimony, the couple’s teenage children were present and said their mother had threatened their father with a knife before he retrieved a gun and shot her; prosecutors characterized the shooting as arising from a domestic dispute.

A jury later convicted Gilleylen of manslaughter and felony possession of a firearm and he received a prison term. Was anyone in the neighborhood aware of tensions in their household before July 15, 2019?