Remembering Rowan Ford

Two days ago, November 3, marked the sixth anniversary of the brutal murder of nine-year-old Rowan Ford, a fourth grader at Triway Elementary School in Stella. Since this post was originally published in the June 20, 2011, Turner Report, the glacial pace of justice that I wrote of has thawed out. Rowan's stepfather, David Wesley Spears, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty, while Spears' friend, Chris Collings, was found guilty and sentenced to death, a sentence that is being appealed.

It has been almost a decade since I last visited Triway Elementary/Junior High School in Stella.

At the time I was teaching atDiamond Middle School and when some of my students played basketball there, I decided to drive over and see the building where I had spent my fifth through eighth grade years.

The school was almost the same, though three decades had passed. I looked in the room where Mrs. Jean Rowe with her honey sweet, magnolia-dripping voice had entertained us daily with the reading ofThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A few doors down was where Mrs. Dorothy Reynolds had taught us about nouns and verbs and other things for which we did not see any use as we entered our teenage years.

I walked by the principal’s office, a place where, thankfully, I did not spend much time in junior high (I made up for that in high school). No one wanted to have to face our principal, that stern disciplinarian, Mr. Orvie Walker.

Our basketball teams did not do well that night, but the trip down memory lane was worth it. Even though I did not arrive at Triway until fifth grade, I even looked at the area where the fourth graders attended classes in the late ‘60s, a section of the building that was new at the time.

To me, junior high school was an enjoyable time, one I would not trade for anything. It was a time when I never had to deal with anything sordid or sinister, a time when I simply enjoyed being a child.

That childhood innocence was stripped away from those who attended Triway in 2007.

 One of those classrooms in that fourth grade section was likely the place that nine-year-old Rowan Ford spent the most enjoyable moments of her days. Rowan Ford loved school. She arrived long before the first bell rang and stayed long after her classmates had gone home for the day.

At least that’s what they said after Rowan was found, brutally raped and murdered, in nearby Barry County, in November 2007.

Rowan’s stepfather, David Wesley Spears, and his friend, Chris Collings, were arrested. According to law enforcement officials, both men confessed to the crime.

And while both of them have been behind bars since their initial arrest, neither man is anywhere close to trial. For the past three and a half years, the court dockets show changes of venues, various and sundry motions over the admissibility of those confessions, and all kinds of delaying tactics.

The prosecution, as you might expect, is seeking the death penalty for the two men.

Collings’ trial was scheduled for May in a different county, but there were not enough people in the jury pool who were not familiar with the case. Even though Collings had already received one change of venue, his lawyer asked for another. The judge, instead, opted to bring in potential jurors from another county.

Collings’ trial is scheduled for early 2012.

The wait for justice for Rowan Ford’s stepfather will take even longer. His trial, also being held elsewhere on a change of venue, is scheduled to begin Nov. 5, 2012- five years and two days after the fourth grader was murdered, three months into what would have been her freshman year at East Newton High School.

I wrote the following words more than two years ago on The Turner Report and if anything, the situation has only grown worse:

Life has gone on in Stella since the community was shaken to the core by the murder, but there is never a day when Rowan Ford is far from the townspeople’s thoughts.

Visitors still flock to a memorial webpage for Rowan, with condolences continuing to pour in and pages filled with pictures of Rowan and images of cartoon characters like Winnie the Pooh, a direct contrast to the violence that ended Rowan’s life.

When the community recently dedicated a memorial park for veterans, a tribute to the child was included. In her absence, she remains a part of Stella’s everyday life.

Rowan Ford was robbed over and over during her young life. She was deprived of her normal childhood, her innocence, and eventually, her life.

Meanwhile, the hourglass of justice continues to turn at a glacial pace, as the years pass since Rowan Ford, forever nine, was taken from us.