A family home, especially in the Black community, can be a thing of generational wealth or the center of an ugly dispute —who could forget the core conflict at the center of the film Soul Food?
Sadly, a household in Mount Vernon, New York experienced the latter in the worst way possible when a woman was killed at the hands of her own uncle stemming from what police are saying began as a dispute over family property.
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The tragic killing last week of 39-year-old Julia Anderson was senseless to say the least, occurring as she was leaving her job as an aide at a group home in the Wakefield area of The Bronx. Reports state that Anderson was approached by a gunman, later identified as 58-year-old Michael Foster, just as she was entering her SUV, and shot point blank in the abdomen. Officers arrived to find her suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, which she succumbed to later at a local hospital.
More details below via CBS New York:
“Anderson and Foster lived in the same house, which was shared by multiple generations of one family.
Sources say Foster made incriminating admissions when the NYPD questioned him at the home Tuesday night.
Foster was arrested Wednesday evening in the Bronx and charged with murder, manslaughter and 10 counts of criminal possession of a weapon.“
The bitter family dispute even led Foster to accuse Anderson of forging a deed on the shared home, which actually led to her being arrested last year before charges were quickly dropped. In her countersuit, she blamed investigators for trusting, in her words, “unvetted statements of a known felon with a violent history and a personal vendetta.”
Foster, already a convicted felon, infamously served time for his part in the 1988 fatal shooting of Calvin Reed, father to former NFL star running back Ray Rice. Following his release in 1999, he reportedly became a road manager for New York rap veteran, Jadakiss. In an ironic twist of fate, it led to his niece signing to the Yonkers emcee, going by the name Jewelz Champaign.
Many fans are now reflecting back on their 2010 collaboration, “Coach Of The Year,” with fond memories and props to her rap skills. According to The New York Post, her father Julius Anderson says she eventually quit music after some bad experiences in the industry, telling the outlet, “She said, ‘Dad, I can’t make myself do all those things,’ so she stopped.”
Foster has been remanded without bail. We send out sincerest prayers to the entire family in processing this heartbreaking turn of events.
