Renée Good deserved much better, and so did Samuel DuBose
source: Black Catholic Messengers
published: 14 January 2026
Image Credit: vudhikrai at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net
On Jan. 7, Renée Nicole Good dropped her six-year old son off at his Minneapolis school for the last time. She brought him some stuffed play animals as a present, but did not live to deliver them.
In the aftermath of her senseless and tragic death, the news cycle was ruled by the lie that her killer—U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross—shot her in self-defense as she supposedly attempted to run him over.
This asinine incident in Minneapolis instantly reminded me of another police killing, one with striking similarities, that I reported on in Cincinnati 10 years ago.
The officer involved in the killing of 43-year-old Samuel DuBose in July 2015 was a University of Cincinnati police officer named Raymond Tensing, 25, with four years of experience in law enforcement.
I covered that killing—a miscarriage of justice—for the Tennessee Tribune, the state's oldest Black newspaper, and the Cincinnati Herald, the city's weekly Black newspaper. A decade before, I was a courts and police reporter in Sandusky, Ohio, covering its police department—which acted more like an oppressive, occupying army.
A father of 13 children, DuBose was, like Renée Good, unarmed and sitting in his car, wearing his seat belt, when Tensing shot him in the head.
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