‘If You Change the Color of the People…’: Attorney for Woman Acquitted of Murder for Killing Carjacker Says She Was Charged Because She Is Black and He Was White
A judge cleared an Ohio woman of a carjacker’s murder in a case in which her attorneys asserted that she wouldn’t have been charged with multiple counts of murder and assault had she been white and the carjacker been Black.
Leeyonna Ward, 22, was charged with the murder of 24-year-old Preston Allman on May 1, 2021, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
Prosecutors said that Ward was meeting a man for a drug deal in a parking lot that night. When she parked her car, a witness got in and sat in the passenger seat. Then, Allman got into the back seat behind Ward and pressed a gun to her neck.
That’s when Ward hit the gas while exiting the vehicle at the same time while it was still in drive. After the car crashed into a building, the witness took off. Then, Ward came back to the car, and as Allman pointed what later emerged as a BB gun at her through the window, she fired off two shots, one of which hit Allman, police said.
Not only was Ward charged with one murder charge for Allman’s death, but she was also charged with felony murder, involuntary manslaughter, non-felony assault, felonious assault, elevated drug trafficking, and possession of drugs with a gun specification.
Her attorney, Joseph Landusky II, claimed self-defense in this case. He told The Dispatch that the only reason Ward was facing murder charges was because she was Black and he was white.
“If you just change the color of the people, if my client’s a white woman and shot a Black guy carjacking her, I’d bet everything I owned that this case never would’ve gotten indicted,” Landusky said.
Landusky also stated that Allman and another man set Ward up to carjack her at gunpoint, and no money or drugs were exchanged.
In the bench trial, the judge only found Ward guilty of tampering with evidence with a gun specification and improper handling of a firearm since she threw away her gun, which was never found. State law in 2021 prohibited her from carrying a loaded gun in her car. She’ll be sentenced later for those convictions.