Many of us remember Terry McMillan’s, author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella got her Groove Back, highly publicized divorce from her “down low” ex-husband. “I’m…free to move forward since I’m now out of this hellish holding pattern…” McMillan said after her embarrassing divorce. But McMillian’s divorce was a second chance for her.

Deanna Cook, however, wasn’t so lucky. After finding out her husband was sleeping with men behind her back on April 9, 2012 she posted on Twitter, “I just found out my Down Low X Husband Lovers name!! Wat a SOUR PUSS…” And on August 17, 2012 Deanna Tweeted this chilling remark that left her followers stunned.

Delvecchio Patrick, her x-husband, brutally murdered her in a domestic dispute the SAME day of that disturbing tweet.

Since the call was made from a cell phone, it took nine minutes to find the location before a squad car was dispatched to the plea for help. Allegedly, the dispatcher failed to relay to on-duty officers that “Cook was being attacked” even though tapes of the 911 call reveals Cook “choking and screaming” which left family members questioning the police department’s handling of the case. According to the officers, they responded to the call as a simple disturbance which resulted in them leaving the location without thoroughly investigating the premises. As said by responding officers, there were no signs of any distress at that address upon their arrival. But it wasn’t because a crime had not been committed but because Patrick had already silenced the screams of his victim and had fled the scene. Deanna Cook’s body was found two days later in the bathtub by her teenage daughter who helped other family members kick down the door when she failed to make it to church.

Prior to the murder the two were already involved in an ugly divorce proceeding where Patrick posted a picture of divorce papers signed by him and awaiting the signature of his wife on his Facebook page.

Most people will only highlight the importance of domestic violence awareness in Cook’s case but I am left with other questions.  Should people die over one’s sexual preference? Why are many black men reluctant to come out and embrace their sexuality? With HIV on the rise in the black community, affecting heterosexual black women at a rate several times faster than women of other races, is there something happening here worth discussing? I believe it is as did Deanna Cook when she tweeted about losing another friend to the AIDS epidemic.

R&B superstar, R. Kelly, coined the term “trapped in the closet” referring to men who sleep with men who sleep with unsuspecting women. Did we simply brush his song off as a jingle and ignore the truth? It’s a harsh but brutal reality that something is definitely happening in the black community but many are unwilling to talk about it. What is your take on the untimely death of Deanna Cook and the underlying cause “down low brothers and domestic violence”? I scribbled my statement, now what’s yours?

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