She got murdered. Why did she do it?

She was killed in the bay of a car wash in the city where I live. The guy the cops say is on video stabbing and shooting her has entered a plea of “not guilty.” It’s a popular plea. She’s dead, and he’s in the can, and the district attorney seemed very sorry in his sound bite. There’s a picture of her and some big candles in glass jars at the scene. The car wash is open.

The law has its arms around the accused. There are huge books describing what will happen to him listing his rights as a defendant. Good. If you ever get arrested, you’re gonna want every right he has, and as many more as you can find.

He may or may not be guilty, but she is definitely dead, and she died about 100 feet from a Chinese restaurant on one side and a convenience store on the other side. The beef negimaki in the Chinese place is excellent, and the convenience store sells coffee for $1 a cup, so the neighborhood is not without hope.

And we went to work on her right away.

By “we,” I mean Facebook, casual conversation, talk radio.

She’d been “in a relationship” with the guy. It’s 2023 in America; the term “in a relationship” covers every sort of cohabitation except marriage, and it is not specific as to length of the relationship, so it’s perfect. She had children. His kids? Their kids? Her kids? Definitely her kids. It’s 2023. All kids belong to the mother.

She has a restraining order against him, and in the hour or so before her death, she received hundreds of texts from the guy. Presumably, he was not asking after the health of her kids.

So, why did she stay with him? Why did she get involved with “someone like that”? Why didn’t she leave?

My guess is she did leave and he tracked her like you’d track a wounded deer until you get close enough for the kill shot. I know. I used to hunt.

And we’re wondering why she didn’t do something else to get away from the guy, why she didn’t do something smarter, why she didn’t do something stronger, why she didn’t do something sooner.

And we’re wondering if she used drugs. We’re wondering if both her kids were from the same man and if either one of them were from the man who killed her.

We’re sorry for her kids. They didn’t buy this tragedy. No one is sorry for the man, and no one should be. Not if he’s guilty.

But we’re chipping away at her, looking for the reason why she let this terrible thing happen to her.

I’m a man. If I walk out of a bar next week, drunk, at midnight, and someone tries to rob me, and

I fight back, and the robber stabs me to death, very few people will ask why I was out, why I was out late, why I was three drinks over my limit or even why I was wearing an expensive watch. No one will ask why I didn’t try to negotiate with the robber. No one will ask if I yelled for help or maybe I could have fought back a little harder. At the most, some Second Amendment patriot will say I should have carried a gun, but no one will question my right to be where I was, doing what I was doing, living the way I live.

No one will be interested in how many children I have, or if I live with those children. No one will ask why I went out, at night, to drink. I’m a man. We go places. I could probably be killed in a bar fight I started and get more sympathy than the woman who bled to death in a car wash.

She was murdered. So why did she do it?

Dion’s latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called “Devil’s Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America.” It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.