black woman

Jessica Carter is tired of being resilient.

After her brother, Richard Ware, 48, was stabbed to death outside a Los Feliz homeless shelter last month, it fell to her to hold their extended family together.

Just eight months prior, another relative — her 36-year-old nephew, Jesse Darjean — was gunned down around the block from his childhood home in Compton. His slaying remains unsolved.

Across L.A. County and around the country, murder rates are falling to lows not seen since the late 1960s. Yet clearance rates — a measure of how often police solve cases — have remained relatively steady. In other words: Even with fewer homicides to investigate, authorities have been unable to bring more murderers to justice. Police data show killings of Black and Latino people are still less likely to be solved than those of white or Asian victims.

Carter’s hometown of Compton is still crawling out from under its reputation as a national epicenter for gang violence. But for all of its continued struggles, violent crime — especially killings — has plummeted. When the gang wars peaked in 1991, there were 87 homicides. Last year, there were 18, including Darjean’s fatal shooting on Oct. 24.

The way Carter sees it, the killers who took her brother and nephew are both getting away with it — but for different reasons. In Darjean’s shooting, there are no known suspects, witnesses or motive. But the man who stabbed Ware is known to authorities. The L.A. County district attorney’s office declined to file charges against him, finding evidence of self-defense, according to a memo released to The Times.

Ware’s sister and other relatives dispute the D.A.’s decision, claiming authorities have failed to fully investigate.

“The system failed him,” Carter said.

In the absence of arrests and charges, Carter and her family have simmered with rage, grief and frustration. With digital footprints, DNA testing and more resources than ever available to police, how is it that the people who took their loved ones are still walking free?

Jessica Carter, right, lights candles on the sidewalk to memorialize her brother, Richard Ware, who was stabbed to death outside a nearby homeless shelter.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

In Darjean’s case, the investigation is led by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which has patrolled Compton since 2000, when the city disbanded its own Police Department. Leads appear to be scarce. His body was found in the back seat of his car, which had been riddled with bullets. A father of three, he had just gotten home late at night from one of his jobs as a security guard.

To Sherrina Lewis, his mother, it seemed the world was quick to forget and move on. News outlets largely ignored the shooting. Social media sensationalized it. She couldn’t resist reading some of the comments online, speculating about whether her son was killed by someone he knew or because of his race or a gang affiliation.

But, Darjean was no gangster, she says. True, there had been rumors around the neighborhood about escalating conflict between the Cedar Block Pirus, a Black gang, and their Latino rivals. But if anything, Lewis said, her son was targeted in a classic case of wrong place, wrong time.

Jesse Darjean in an undated photo.

(Jessica Carter)

When homicide detectives began knocking on doors for answers, her former neighbors claimed not to have seen anything. For Lewis, it felt like betrayal — many of those neighbors had watched Darjean grow up with their kids.

“Each and every day I have to ask God to lift the hardness in my heart, because I‘m angry,” Lewis said. “They’re not gonna make my son no cold case, I promise you that.”

Lewis nearly lost Darjean once before, at the moment of his birth.

He and his twin brother were born three months early, and doctors warned that Darjean was the less likely of the two to survive. He suffered from respiratory problems, which left him dependent on a breathing machine. The prognosis was bleak.

Casha, left, and her brother Jesse Darjean as babies.

(Jessica Carter)

Doctors asked her for “a name for his death certificate” in case he died en route to a hospital in Long Beach. Picking “Jesse” on the spot was agony, she said. In the end, Darjean was the twin who survived.

Shy as a child, he had grown up to be outgoing and witty, a person who loved to cook soul food and make dance videos with his sister and post them on Instagram. While his siblings all moved away as they got older, Darjean insisted on staying put. Compton was home, through and through, he used to tell his mother. He wasn’t blind to the gang violence, but he came to know a different side of the city, one that represented Black joy and resilience — a side he saw captured in Kendrick Lamar’s music video for the Grammy-winning “Not Like Us.”

When his niece ran for Miss Teen Compton, Darjean advocated on her behalf by taking out a full-page ad in the local newspaper that proclaimed: “Compton is the best city on Earth.”

But Darjean knew the pain of losing loved ones. His friend Montae Talbert was killed late one night in 2011 in a drive-by shooting outside an Inglewood liquor store. Talbert, known as M-Bone, was a member of the rap group Cali Swag District, the group behind the viral rap dance the “Dougie.”

Around the same time, the mother of Darjean’s oldest daughter was gunned down in Compton. A few years later, another uncle, Terry Carter, a businessman who built classic lowrider cars and started a record label with Ice Cube, was struck and killed by a vehicle driven by rap impresario Marion “Suge” Knight.

After Darjean’s funeral, which Lewis said drew more than 1,000 people, she returned to the scene of the shooting: Brazil Street, right off Wilmington Avenue, on a modest block of stucco and wood-frame homes.

With the bravado of an angry, grieving mother, she began going door-to-door in her old neighborhood, seeking answers. She wanted to show anyone who was watching that she wouldn’t be intimidated into silence.

When she confronted one of Darjean’s close childhood friends about what happened, he swore he didn’t know anything. She didn’t believe him.

“He just broke down crying. I can tell it was eating him up,” Lewis said.

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to multiple inquires about Darjean’s case.

Jesse Darjean holds his daughter Jessica. At right is another relative.

(Jessica Carter)

On some level, Lewis understands the hesitancy. Fear of gang retaliation and distrust of law enforcement still hangs over the west Compton neighborhood. After raising her six children there, in 2006 she sold their family home of 50 years and moved to Palmdale because she didn’t want her “kids to become accustomed to death.” For her, she said, the final straw was the discovery of a body “propped up” on her neighbor’s fence.

Like generations of Black women before her, Lewis is faced with enormous pressure to carry their family’s burden. Possessing a superhuman-like will to overcome adversity is celebrated by society with terms such as “Black Girl Magic” and “Strong Black Woman,” said Keisha Bentley-Edwards, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University. But such unrealistic expectations not only strip Black women of their innocence from an early age, but also contribute to higher pregnancy-related death rates and other bad health outcomes, she said.

“A lot of times people expect Black women to take care of it,” Bentley-Edwards said in an interview. Instead of romanticizing the struggle, she said, there should be “tangible support like housing or employment” and other resources.

But experts say safety nets are at risk, particularly after the Trump administration in April terminated roughly $811 million in public safety grants for L.A. and other major cities. As a result, federal funds for victim services programs, which offer counseling and other resources, have been slashed.

Lewis never thought she’d be in a position to need such help.

“The funny thing is, we’re from Compton born and raised, but we were not a statistic until my son was murdered,” she said. “My kids had a two-parent household. We both had jobs. We weren’t doing welfare: I worked every day.”

Months of waiting on an arrest in Darjean’s death led Carter, his aunt, into a “dark place.” She ended up taking a spiritual retreat into the mountains of Nigeria.

She was still working through the feelings of anger and guilt when she learned her brother, Ware, had been fatally stabbed on July 5.

She described the days and weeks that followed as a teary blur. Coming from a family of nurses taught her how to push aside her own grief and forge on, but she was left wondering how much more she could endure.

Ware, who went by Duke, was his family’s unofficial historian, setting out to map out their sprawling Portuguese and Creole roots and scouring the internet for long-lost relatives. He used to brag all the time about his daughter, who had graduated from nursing school and moved back to the L.A. area to work at a pediatric intensive care unit on the Westside. He used to joke that for all of his shortcomings as a father, he had at least gotten one thing right.

In recent months, though, Ware’s life had started to spiral. His diabetes had gotten worse, and a back injury left him unable to continue in his job as a long-haul truck driver. Relatives worried he was hiding a drug addiction from them.

He had adopted a bull mastiff puppy named Nala. She used to follow him everywhere, usually trotting a few steps behind without a leash. Even when he was having trouble making ends meet, he always “spoiled her,” his family said.

For a few months, he lived out of a van one of his sisters bought for him. He then landed at a shelter, a hangar-style structure on the edge of Griffith Park. He and Nala were kicked out after a short time, but he still frequented the area, and it’s where L.A. County authorities said the fight that ended in his killing began.

Prosecutors said in a memo that surveillance video showed Ware and his dog chasing another man into a parking lot across the street from the shelter. The two men, the D.A.’s memo said, had been involved in an ongoing dispute, possibly over a woman.

Friends, family and supporters of Richard Ware gather near the shelter where he was stabbed to death.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

According to the memo, the man said he’d been carrying a knife because of a previous altercation in which Ware ordered his dog to attack. On the day of the stabbing, the man said, Ware had shown up with Nala at the shelter, looking for a confrontation.

After the fight, responding officers found Ware suffering from a deep wound to his chest, Nala with several lacerations and the suspect hiding in a nearby porta-potty. His clothes had been torn off, and he was bleeding profusely from several severe dog bites, the memo said. Prosecutors said witnesses corroborated the man’s story that Ware had been the aggressor, in addition to the video footage.

Ware’s family says that account contradicts what they heard from other residents, who claimed Ware was the one defending himself after the other man attacked him with a vodka bottle. In the meantime, they are working to secure Nala’s release from the pound, where she has been nursing her injuries.

Richard Ware, 48, was stabbed to death on July 5 outside a Los Feliz homeless shelter.

(Jessica Carter)

On July 8, Carter organized a candlelight vigil for her brother outside the shelter where the killing happened. That morning, she said, she cried in the shower before steeling herself so she could run out to a Dollar Tree store to pick up some balloons.

When she got to the vigil, Lewis made her way around, greeting the swarm of relatives holding homemade signs and chanting Ware’s name. After a final prayer, the group released balloons, most of which floated upward with the evening’s lazy breeze. Some, though, got caught in the branches of a large tree nearby.

A smile finally crossed Carter’s face as she pointed up to them. She took it as a sign from Ware, as though he was saying a last goodbye before he departed to heaven.

“He’s trying to hang on,” she said.

Twenty-five years ago on Sept. 11, 2000, UPN debuted a comedy called “Girlfriends” that followed the lives of four Black women living in Los Angeles.

The show’s creator, Mara Brock Akil, who’d gotten her start writing on shows like “South Central,” “Moesha” and “The Jamie Foxx Show,” was tired of seeing out-of-touch depictions of Black women on screen. She wanted to raise a mirror to Black women and showcase them in their fullness as fleshed out characters who are ambitious, creative, messy at times and most importantly nuanced.

The first season of “Girlfriends” on DVD.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

For eight seasons until the show was abruptly canceled in 2008, viewers tuned in to watch the tight-knit friend group that included Joan (Tracee Ellis Ross), Toni (Jill Marie Jones), Lynn (Persia White) and Maya (Golden Brooks) navigate relationships, sexism at work, beauty, classism, sexuality and everything in between. Today, “Girlfriends,” which was added to Netflix’s catalog in 2020, is widely considered one of the most influential TV shows to affect Black culture.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of “Girlfriends,” DCDG & Co., an L.A.-based fine arts agency, has teamed up with the cast and Loren LaRosa of iHeartRadio’s “The Breakfast Club” to independently curate an art exhibition that pays homage to the groundbreaking series. The showcase, which explores the show’s core themes including sisterhood, ambition and self-discovery through photography, sculpture, paintings, an installation and more, will be on display from Friday through Sunday at the Line Hotel in Koreatown.

Each artwork featured in the all Black women exhibition was selected by the “Girlfriends” cast and LaRosa — all of whom are first time art curators. The three-day event will also feature an artist talk led by DCDG & Co. co-founder Delaney George on Saturday, which is open to the public.

A sculpture of a Black woman’s head titled “She” by Alé Reviere was selected for the exhibition.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“[This] show deserves to be celebrated and if we in the culture don’t do it, then we’re just waiting for the powers that be or networks that are transitioning to a digital space,” says David Colbert Jr., co-founder of DCDG & Co. “These moments might get passed up on.”

“Girlfriends: A Visual Tribute” is part of DCDG & Co.’s ongoing curatorial series called Iconic Visions, which invites individuals in various creative spaces like TV, film, music, fashion and sports to step into the role of curator.

When Colbert brought the idea about doing the exhibit to his friend Brooks — whom he met at Frieze a couple of years ago — her response was an immediate yes.

“We are wearable art,” says Golden Brooks. “We are visual art in the space of a TV show.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“I always want to do something special for [these milestones] because it is a bookmark of everything that “Girlfriends” has done,” says Brooks. “We are still uplifting communities. We are still entertaining and empowering the daughters of the mothers who watch the show, so we’re kind of raising generations of young women.”

Brooks, who has been a longtime supporter of the L.A. arts community, says having an art exhibition to celebrate the anniversary was the perfect way to blend both of her passions.

“We are wearable art. We are visual art in the space of a TV show,” she says. “This also inspired artists to celebrate how they see us as women of color, as women in a space of unity and connection, and what better way to be the springboard and the catalyst to celebrate what sisterhood looks like?”

White, who’s been drawing and painting since she was a child, had a similar reaction to being a part of the exhibit. “When they sent me the links to the art, I literally got tears in my eyes,” she says. “I was just really touched by the women and [their] different experiences.”

“Girlfriends: A Visual Tribute” also features a solo exhibition put together by DCDG & Co. cultural curator Erika Conner, which is a collection of photos of iconic Black women including Rihanna, Lil Kim and Naomi Campbell, taken by renowned photographer Cheryl Fox.

While the main exhibition pays tribute to “Girlfriends,” there’s only one artwork — a mixed media piece by Jillian Thompson that uses acrylic, thread and collage — that displays the beloved friends group’s actual faces. All of the other artwork draws inspiration from the show’s aesthetic, style and themes.

Among the artwork, which was made by artists from around the nation, there are multiple L.A.-based artists featured in the show including Brittany Byrd, McKayla Chandler, Tiffany “Just Rock” Brown, Asari Aibangbee and Tumi Adeleye.

McKayla Chandler, a multidisciplinary artist based in L.A., created an interactive installation for the exhibit called “Mama’s Hands Only.” The installation mimics a living room and features a couch, rug, an entertainment center with family photos sprinkled on top and an old school TV that displays episodes of “Girlfriends.” The focal point of the installation, which hangs on a wall above the couch, is a large portrait of Chandler’s mother braiding her hair as she’s done since she was a little girl.

A close-up of multidisciplinary artist McKayla Chandler’s installation titled “Mama’s Hands Only.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“To me it feels like connection. Any young, Black woman or Black kid in general can relate to sitting in their mom’s lap and getting their hair braided,” says Chandler. “[The show] is really about these friends going through life together, going through different relationships and even bickering with each other, [then] coming back together. It’s a very special bond that they have with each other, so [with] me thinking about showing my mom here and having this place for you to sit down, look through someone’s old photographs and watch ‘Girlfriends,’ it lends to the nostalgic feeling of it all.”

Although Tiffany “Just Rock” Brown, a photographer based in L.A., primarily takes photos of men, particularly male rappers, she decided to submit a few images for the “Girlfriends” exhibit because she grew up watching the show with her family. Her photo, titled “In This Light,” that was selected for the show depicts two Black women embracing while on the set of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” music video, which was shot in Nickerson Gardens.

A painting titled “Leona’s in the Upper Room” by Marie Jose is featured in the “Girlfriends: A Visual Tribute” exhibit.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“These girls are the epitome of what you see when you come to these areas, but they’re also the inspiration for high fashion, for all those things that don’t get acknowleged,” she says. It reminded her of the void that “Girlfriends” filled when it debuted.

“I think there’s beautiful representation of what [Black people] have done and what we’ve accomplished, and “Girlfriends” is a true representation of that,” says Brown. “Women that were dressed flawlessly. They were beautiful. They were successful. They were just living life and trying to find love, just regular stories. It’s very much still a space that’s missing [in television], but I think it should definitely be celebrated.”

Like Brown, Brittany Byrd, a multidisciplinary artist from L.A., was also introduced to “Girlfriends” at a young age. “It was just always on in my house,” says Byrd. “I just remember seeing Tracee Ellis Ross and I was like, ‘Damn, she’s beautiful!’”

For the exhibit, Byrd created a piece titled “Episode 17,” which is inspired by an episode in Season 4 titled “Love, Peace and Hair Grease.”

“It’s mostly about Lynn and her exploring her hair through her identity as a Black woman, but whether you’re mixed or all Black, hair is something that is at the top of our minds,” says Byrd, who was still putting the final touches on her 6-foot painting. “Whether it’s done or if we’re polished, we’re always just kind of seeking those questions of validity through societal beauty standards when it’s like we’re as beautiful as we feel. So I want my piece to just evoke emotion.”

As she prepares for opening night of the exhibit, Brooks says she’s most excited to meet all of the artists and to see how all of the artwork comes together.

One of her favorite pieces in the exhibit is a massive, hyperrealism painting by Alé Reviere. Fittingly titled “See Through You,” it depicts a young woman’s face, staring intensely back at the viewer.

A painting titled “See Through You” by Alé Reviere is featured in the “Girlfriends” tribute exhibition.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“All of her features were just so us,” says Brooks. “The texture of her hair and the expression on her face. There was a pain. There was a sadness, but there’s also sort of this freedom and unapologetic look in her eyes.”

She adds, “Pieces like that just move me.”

ATLANTA — The case of a pregnant woman in Georgia who was declared brain-dead and has been kept on life support for three months has given rise to complicated questions about abortion law and differing views about whether a fetus is a person.

Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mother, was about two months pregnant on Feb. 19 when she was declared brain-dead, according to an online fundraising page started by her mother. Doctors said Georgia’s strict antiabortion law requires that she remain on life support until the fetus has developed enough to be delivered, her mother wrote.

The law, one of a wave of measures enacted in conservative states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, restricts abortion once cardiac activity is detected and gives personhood rights to a fetus.

Smith’s mother says the law has left her family without a say in a difficult situation, and with her due date still months away, the family is left wondering whether the baby will be born with disabilities or can even survive. Some activists, many of them Black women like Smith, say it raises issues of racial equity.

What does the law say?

Emory Healthcare, which runs the hospital, has not explained how doctors decided to keep Smith on life support except to say in a statement that it considered “Georgia’s abortion laws and all other applicable laws.”

The state adopted a law in 2019 to ban abortion after cardiac activity can be detected, about six weeks into pregnancy, that came into effect after Roe was overturned.

That law does not explicitly address Smith’s situation, but allows abortion to preserve the life or physical health of the pregnant woman. Three other states have similar bans that kick in around the six-week mark, and 12 bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

David S. Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law in Philadelphia, said the hospital might be most concerned about part of the law that gives fetuses legal rights as “members of the species Homo sapiens.”

Cohen said that Emory may therefore consider Smith and the fetus as two patients and that once Smith was on life support, the hospital had a legal obligation to keep the fetus alive, even after Smith was considered brain-dead.

“These are the kind of cases that law professors have been talking about for a long time when they talk about fetal personhood,” he said.

State Rep. Nabilah Islam Parkes, an Atlanta-area Democrat, said Friday that she sent a letter to state Atty. Gen. Chris Carr asking for a legal opinion on how Georgia’s abortion law applies when a pregnant woman is brain-dead.

Divide within antiabortion movement

Antiabortion groups are divided over whether they should support personhood provisions, which are on the books in at least 17 states, according to the advocacy group Pregnancy Justice.

Some argue that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses should be considered people with the same rights as babies after birth. This personhood concept seeks to give them rights under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says a state can’t “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process or law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Some saw personhood as politically impractical, especially after personhood amendments to state constitutions were rejected by voters in Colorado, Mississippi and North Dakota between 2008 and 2014. Those who steered away sought laws and restrictions on abortion that stopped short of personhood, although they were often informed by the concept.

Personhood proponents argue this lacks moral clarity. Some personhood proponents have been sidelined in national antiabortion groups; the National Right to Life Committee cut ties with its Georgia Right to Life affiliate in 2014 after the state wing opposed bills that restricted abortion but allowed exceptions for rape and incest.

Unequal access to care for Black women

The Associated Press has not been able to reach Smith’s mother, April Newkirk. But Newkirk told Atlanta TV station WXIA that her daughter went to a hospital complaining of headaches and was given medication and released. Then, her boyfriend awoke to her gasping for air and called 911. Emory University Hospital determined she had blood clots in her brain and she was declared brain-dead.

It’s not clear what Smith said when she went to the hospital or whether the care she was given was standard for her symptoms. But Black women often report that their pain isn’t taken seriously, and an Associated Press investigation found that health outcomes for Black women are worse because of circumstances linked to racism and unequal access to care.

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s abortion law, said: “Black women must be trusted when it comes to our healthcare decisions.”

“Like so many Black women, Adriana spoke up for herself. She expressed what she felt in her body, and as a healthcare provider, she knew how to navigate the medical system,” Simpson said, noting that by the time Smith was diagnosed “it was already too late.”

It’s unclear whether the clots in Smith’s brain were related to her pregnancy.

But her situation is undoubtedly alarming for those seeking solutions to disparities in the maternal mortality rate among Black women. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women had a mortality rate of 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023. That’s more than three times the rate for white women, and it is higher than the rates for Latino and Asian women.

What is Smith’s current situation?

While Smith is on a ventilator and probably other life-support devices, being declared brain-dead means she is dead.

Some experts refer to “life support” as “maintenance measures,” “organ support” or “somatic support,” which relates to the body as distinct from the mind.

Emory has not made public what is being done to allow Smith’s fetus to continue to develop.

In another case in Florida, doctors successfully delivered the baby of a 31-year-old woman who was declared brain-dead while 22 weeks pregnant, but not without weeks of sustained monitoring, testing and medical care. The woman’s family wanted to keep the fetus, physicians with the University of Florida College of Medicine said in a 2023 paper.

On her first day of admission, doctors administered hormones to raise her blood pressure and placed a feeding tube. After she was transferred to an intensive care unit, an obstetric nurse stayed by her bedside continuously to monitor the fetus’ heart rate and movements.

She was on a ventilator, regularly received steroids and hormones, and needed multiple antibiotics to treat pneumonia. Her medical team encompassed multiple specialties: obstetrics, neonatology, radiology and endocrinology.

Doctors performed surgery to remove the fetus at 33 weeks when its heart rate fell, and the baby appeared to be in good health at birth.

“We don’t have great science to guide clinical decision-making in these cases,” said Dr. Kavita Arora, an obstetrician and gynecologist in North Carolina who raised concerns about the effect of prolonged ventilator use on a fetus. “There simply aren’t a lot of cases like this.”

The 2023 paper warned that “costs should not be underestimated.”

It is not clear whether Smith, whose mother said she was a nurse at Emory University Hospital, had health insurance. But JoAnn Volk, a professor, founder and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said that for people with health insurance, it’s generally up to the insurer to determine whether care is medically necessary and covered under the plan.

While it is unclear how much it will cost to keep Smith on life support until the fetus can be delivered, or who will be responsible for that cost, her mother’s GoFundMe page mentions Smith’s 7-year-old son and notes that the baby could have significant disabilities as the effort aims to raise $275,000.

Associated Press writers Brumback and Thanawala reported from Atlanta and Mulvihill from Cherry Hill, N.J. AP writer Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed to this report.