Mourning becomes Tennessean

Jere Longman has a sad article in The New York Times:

An empty white uniform was draped on an empty chair on the bench when Middle Tennessee State took the court in the Sun Belt Conference women’s basketball tournament. Missing on this somber afternoon was Tina Stewart, 21, a reserve junior guard who died of stab wounds after an altercation with her roommate at their apartment near campus in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, southeast of Nashville. The roommate, Shanterrica Madden, 18, a freshman, has been charged with first-degree murder.
In Stewart’s absence Sunday, her memory was everywhere: in the Number 20 patches on her teammates’ jerseys, in the “20gether” slogan on warm-up t-shirts, in the purple ribbons that signified her favorite color.
Still, victory remained elusive for a team operating on little more than collective grief. The Number One seed, Middle Tennessee rallied in the second half, but never took the lead before losing, 77-62, to Arkansas State.
“I just felt so much for them, what they’re going through,” Coach Rick Insell said. Asked if his team was too drained emotionally to muster a comeback, using only one substitute in Stewart’s absence, he said, “Maybe; there’s only so much in everybody’s bottle.”
Now the Blue Raiders must wait a week to see if a 23-7 record will qualify them for the NCAA tournament. And they will probably have to wait much longer to find out exactly what happened in those final terrible moments between Stewart and Madden.
They were two young women from Memphis, both having attended Central High School there, not knowing each other until paired as college roommates last fall, one a popular basketball player, the other an aspiring lawyer who described herself on her Twitter account as “a sweetheart to be around”. Now one is dead and the other is accused of taking a life.
Madden’s lawyer said she stabbed Stewart in self-defense after being attacked. The authorities have disputed that claim. The Murfreesboro police have said they are investigating whether concerns expressed by Stewart over possible drug use in the apartment escalated into a tragic confrontation.
“Miss Stewart did have a bright future, but so did Miss Madden,” Joe Brandon Jr., Madden’s lawyer, said in a telephone interview. “This is a tragedy all the way around.”
The women got along well during the fall semester, realizing their backgrounds were similar, Brandon said. Madden was on an academic scholarship at Middle Tennessee, just as Stewart was on an athletic scholarship, Brandon said, and was studying psychology and political science and maintaining a 3.8 grade point average.
During the current spring semester, Madden had grown uncomfortable when Stewart’s boyfriend, a player on the Middle Tennessee men’s basketball team, began spending nights at the apartment, Brandon said.
Lately, Madden had been staying with a friend while studying for exams, Brandon said, and had returned to the apartment to wash clothes and gather some belongings. Her parents were to pick her up and drive her back to Memphis for spring break. Instead, tension between the roommates began to spiral toward a fatal conclusion.
A Middle Tennessee State official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because authorization had not been given to speak publicly about the incident, said Stewart was believed to have returned home after practice and confronted Madden and perhaps another, unidentified person about smoking marijuana in the apartment.
Stewart feared the police might intervene or that secondhand smoke might cause her to test positive in an NCAA drug screening, both of which could ruin her basketball career, the official said.
About 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday, an off-duty Murfreesboro police officer working as a security guard, or courtesy officer, in the apartment complex, responded to a call from Stewart, police said.
Stewart complained to the courtesy officer that Madden had drugs in the apartment, The Daily News Journal of Murfreesboro reported. At the time, the courtesy officer believed “the complaint to be unfounded”, Kyle Evans, a spokesman for the Murfreesboro police, told the paper.
K.C. Anuna, Stewart’s boyfriend, told reporters that the two roommates had a previous disagreement. He spoke only in general terms at a campus news conference, because of the criminal investigation. Stewart had given Madden a warning, then called the apartment courtesy officer Wednesday after a second dispute, Anuna said. “I guess that’s when the roommate got mad,” he said.
Two Nashville television stations, WSMV and WKRN, reported that Stewart posted a message Wednesday on her Twitter account: “I just called police on my roommate. I feel like a snitch but I don’t like” her.
At 6:53 p.m. Wednesday, the police responded to a disturbance at the apartment. When officers arrived, Stewart was found in a bedroom, stabbed in the chest.
Brandon, Madden’s lawyer, said his client told him that Stewart had initiated the physical confrontation and had grabbed Madden by the hair and begun hitting her in the face. “Miss Stewart had a knife in her possession; unfortunately, Miss Madden grabbed hold of it, and the rest is a bad story,” Brandon said.
In court, Brandon won approval to have the police photograph Madden and document what he called defensive wounds: an abrasion over the left eye and swelling in both eyes.
The police have provided few details about the altercation, except to say that Madden admitted stabbing Stewart and was fleeing the scene when the authorities arrived.
Evans, the police spokesman, did not return calls seeking comment over the weekend. But he told The Daily News Journal that the police disputed Madden’s self-defense claim, saying: “We stand by the first-degree murder charge.”
News of Stewart’s death shocked her coaches and teammates. She has been described as generally quiet but jovial and popular among her teammates. Chris Massaro, the athletic director at Middle Tennessee, called her the social glue that held the players together.
The first in her family to attend college, Stewart carried a 3.2 grade point average in exercise science, university officials said. She had talked of opening a sports rehabilitation center and gym complex after her playing career.
“She came from a tough background, but you could see her grow every year, which is what college is supposed to be about,” Massaro said.
Playing relatively little in her first two seasons on a team with productive scorers, the 5-foot-7 Stewart started fourteen games this season and scored a career-high fifteen points in one. But she began struggling with her shot and returned to the bench, replaced by a freshman. She did not complain, Insell said.
“She was a team player; whatever she had to do for us to win,” Insell said. “She was a hard-nosed kid who didn’t back down from any challenges.”
More than 2,000 mourners attended a candlelight vigil in Stewart’s honor. Beforehand, her teammates held hands, tears in their eyes, and said they would try to win a third consecutive Sun Belt tournament title. “Tina would want us to go out and play,” Anne Marie Lanning, a senior guard, told reporters.
Massaro, the athletic director, cautioned players not to become too burdened by that sentiment, urging them to use the tournament to celebrate Stewart’s life and career. “If they lost, I didn’t want them to think they failed her,” Massaro said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
The team underwent counseling, then boarded a bus for the six-hour trip to Hot Springs. Midway through the trip, Insell said by phone that the players were all asleep, mentally and physically exhausted. “They have just given out,” he said.
Four former Middle Tennessee players flew in to give support at Sunday’s game. Alysha Clark traveled from Israel, where she plays professionally. “She was like family,” Clark said of Stewart. “I couldn’t not be here. She had a laugh that was so contagious. And she was so passionate. She wanted to succeed so bad.” Her eyes began to tear. “It’s like a bad dream,” Clark said. “I just want to wake up.”
One could not predict how this dispirited team would play. The Blue Raiders quickly fell behind, 6-0, and could not muster more than a tie at any point. The players seemed to take small consolation in their resilience. “Emotionally, it’s been tough, but we wanted to go out there and play for Tina,” Lanning said. “We gave it our all. I just know she would be proud of us.”

Rico says girl-on-girl violence is pretty rare, and should have been rarer in this case...