Last Tuesday, police found 22-year-old University of Maryland student Justin DeSha-Overcash dead inside a home he was renting on the 8800 block of 38th Street, across the street from the University’s campus. DeSha-Overcash’s death, the 11th in a series of 13 in 13 days to begin the year in Prince George’s County, appeared to be a cut-and-dry case: police initially believed that DeSha-Overcash was killed during a robbery attempt; when they later discovered marijuana, a digital scale and drug-packaging materials inside the home, they labelled DeSha-Overcash a drug dealer, and chalked up his murder as but one of several drug-related killings which plagued the county during the first two weeks of 2011. Col. Kevin Davis of the Prince George’s County police, told ABC7 that DeSha-Overcash’s “chosen lifestyle more likely than not contributed significantly to this homicide.”
This was all apparently news to DeSha-Overcash’s mother, not to mention the impetus for the university’s chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy to spring into action.
“They’re trying to say he’s something he’s not,” DeSha told ABC7’s Ben Eisler in a phone interview. “I won’t allow it. And if I have to do a news conference, get on TV, trust me, I will do it. I am my son’s defense attorney.”
DeSha-Overcash was her only son. At the age of seven, he told his parents he wanted to be a physicist, she recalled. Eleven years later the North Carolina native entered the University of Maryland, majoring in physics and astronomy.
“He was always very cheerful, very friendly,” recalled Eric Mckenzie, the associate director of Maryland’s astronomy program. “Just a very pleasant person to be around.”
It’s easy to sympathize with DeSha-Overcash’s mother, who will soon bury her only son. And it is rather strange that the police, despite having few if any leads in the case, appear to be focusing their public end of the investigation on the fact that DeSha-Overcash may have engaged in some dope dealing, rather than the fact that a mysterious man gunned him down.
But a tragedy for some is a lobbying opportunity for others.
