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A26-year-old Chicago woman is facing felony charges for firing warning shots into the air after witnessing the death of her fiancé.

Ashley Harrison and the father of her two children, Garvin Whitmore, were traveling from their home in Aurora, Illinois to Chicago to pick up Harrison’s aunt.

When they stopped at a traffic light, an unidentified man with a gun walked up to the car and shot Whitmore in the head. Harrison immediately reached for a handgun and fired warning shots in the air to scare off the shooter.

As the gunman fled, Harris held her fiancé until help arrived. Unfortunately, Whitmore died on the scene.

Harrison was held on a $250,000 bond and charged with reckless discharge of a firearm and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. She is currently on house arrest and will be under 24 hour surveillance.

During Thursday’s edition of NewsOne Now, Roland Martin took issue with authorities in Chicago charging Harrison with a crime, questioned the NRA’s silence on the case, and asked if they would support Harrison during her upcoming legal proceedings.

Martin said, “She fired in the air, and you arrest her — I mean, here is a woman going through a traumatic experience, holding her dying fiancé, he dies in her arms, and she goes to jail.”

The NewsOne Now host exclaimed, “Where in the hell is the NRA?”

“Where is Wayne LaPierre defending this Black woman?” asked Martin. “Since they believe in guns, they believe in the Second Amendment, they should be saying, ‘We’re going to fund her lawyer.'”

Lauren Victoria Burke, Managing Editor of Politic365.com and MSNBC contributing writer, shared Martin’s outrage, adding, “I can’t remember the time when the NRA has jumped on the side of somebody who’s African-American in this situation, and there has been a few cases like this.”  

Martin – still visibly annoyed by the NRA’s silence – later said, “The only time they jumped on the side of somebody Black was the brother who sued the City of Chicago against their handgun bill that went all the way to the Supreme Court.” 

Watch Roland Martin and the NewsOne Now panel discuss the case of Ashley Harrison and the NRA’s silence on the case in the video clip above.

NewsOne Now” with Roland Martin, in its new time slot on TV One.

Subscribe to the “NewsOne Now” Audio Podcast on iTunes.

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