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A 27-year-old Chicago woman was killed when she invited her ex-boyfriend over to collect her engagement ring, according to The Chicago Tribune. 

Julia Martin, who was originally from Detroit, ended her three-year relationship with Rodney Harvey six months ago, her grieving father, Derrick Martin told publication.

During an attempt to return the ring, Harvey, 35, forced open Martin’s South Side apartment door and stabbed her repeatedly before jumping out of the window of the apartment complex, killing himself. Police ruled his death a suicide.

In her last moments, Julia grabbed a phone and called the police. During the conversation, she named her perpetrator. Then she called her dad.

Not only did she call me, she texted me while she was going through all this,” Derrick Martin said Monday.

She was calling everybody, saying that she wanted help. She called another friend and she was panting over the phone, trying to get her breath. He thought it was a prank and he hung up on her. He feels so bad.”

Julia was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where she was pronounced dead at 7:37pm from multiple sharp force injuries, according to Chicago Tribune.

Her father explained “There was no indication [that Harvery] was dangerous … I never would’ve thought that in a million years.”

She never went into that much detail about how bad it was, she was just telling me that they had broke it off and that she was planning on giving the ring back,” he added.

Julia was a Michigan State graduate and a human resources supervisor at a local architecture firm. And according to her father, she was “adventurous,” “church going” and into “strictly into her career.”

She was strictly into her career, always striving for greatness,” he said. “She was never satisfied being stuck in one position, she always tried to get higher and higher and higher.”

 

Julia is just one of many women that fall victim to fragile masculinity and interpartner violence.

Fragile masculinity describes the mental state that leads men to feel entitled to women’s bodies, choices and acknowledgment. This sense of ownership is often perpetrated in patriarchal societies. Julia’s father explained that his daughter had recently started dating again when the tragic incident occurred.

And while we don’t know what triggered Harvey’s violent actions, there are numerous cases of women who were put in perilous situations over jealously, or because they said ‘no’ to a cat-call or to a date. Some of these encounters become violent. In this case, it cost a young, bright woman her life.

Conversations about mental health and the autonomy of women are necessary in order to prevent more lives lost unnecessarily.

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