JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – For the first time, we’re hearing from the survivor of last month’s double shooting in Jacksonville’s Woodstock neighborhood that killed a 42-year-old grandfather.
On Friday, the same day police announced an arrest in the case, the woman — whom we’ll call Lisa — spoke with News4Jax about the circumstances that led up to the Feb. 17 shooting that left her boyfriend, Garvin Owensby Jr., dead and Lisa clinging to life.
The couple’s roommate, 37-year-old Charles James Crosby, was booked Thursday into the Duval County jail on charges of murder, attempted murder and possession of a firearm by a felon, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. He’s being held without bond.
Lisa said Owensby and Crosby were playing chess that day in the West 1st Street home the trio shared. She recalled that Crosby was fixated on a gun that was in the home. It was when the couple got up to leave that Owensby was shot in the head, she said.
“I just sat there in astonishment, crying and saying, ‘Please don’t let him die. Please God, don’t let him die.' And (Crosby) was like, ‘Where the gun at, baby girl?’ And I was like, ‘What gun?’ And I turned around to go out the back door and he shot me,” Lisa recalled.
Lisa remembers dropping to the floor and getting sick. Despite a gunshot wound to the neck, she said she considered getting up and trying to make a run for it. Then she heard the voice of her mother, who passed away two years ago, warning her not to get to her feet.
“And I just heard her voice say, ‘Lisa, don’t get up. Don’t get up.’ And I just turned my head to the side and I played like I was dead. And he kicked me twice and when he found I didn’t move, he got up and he took my car and he fled,” she told News4Jax.
As soon as she knew the danger was over, though, Lisa got up. She said she ran door to door in the neighborhood, desperate to find anyone who would help and call 911. Instead, she said, she was met with hostility – with one neighbor yelling at her.
“I am thinking, why would someone say something like that? I need help. I got shot. I ran around the corner to the next street, and that’s when a gentleman sat me on the sidewalk and called the rescue squad,” Lisa said.
When patrol officers got to the scene near West 1st Street and Line Street about 8:40 a.m. that morning, they found Lisa with a gunshot wound to the neck, said Lt. Craig Waldrup with the Sheriff’s Office’s Homicide Unit. Inside the couple’s home, they found Owensby dead.
Lisa, 38, was rushed to an area hospital for treatment. But when she got the opportunity to briefly speak with investigators, she identified her shooter as Crosby, the couple’s roommate. She’s recovering out of state and says she has no plans to return to Florida.
Owensby, described as a talented artist, is survived by two sons and six grandchildren. Barbara Phillips, the mother of his children, said he was a good father. “Anytime something would happen with our kids, it didn't matter where he was at or what he was doing,” Phillips said.
Services for Owensby are scheduled for Saturday morning in Arlington.