JACKSON, MI — Anthony Owens Jr. wasn’t born in Jackson, but it was always his home.

Originally from Saginaw, he came to the city as a young boy in the early 1990s with his mother, Wanda Beavers, better known in Jackson as Mama Tu-Tu.

With only a few dollars in her pocket, they stayed in Jackson’s Interfaith Shelter together for a time until they could find permanent housing, she said.

Though life was challenging starting out in Jackson, he never wanted to leave.

“I asked him all the time if he wanted to move and he would always say ‘no, I like it here. This my home,’” Mama Tu-Tu said.

Owens died May 17 in a quadruple shooting that injured three others shortly after midnight at what Mama Tu-Tu said was a friend’s home in the 100 block of Lincoln Court, just south of the Jackson city

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