ROOSHAD: Rowena was an all-American teenager.
She had the songs, the music,
the movies, the clothing, the attitude.
It was all there.
Quit hitting mom. It's so rude!
She had a lot of ambition to change the world.
[speaks indistinctly]
TORANJ: But...
that just changed within a few weeks.
ROOSHAD: I asked her if she wanted me to intervene.
We thought fine. He was gone. He was gone away.
[phone ringing]
[operator speaking]
[Toranj speaking]
ROBERT: He was that kind of mentality.
You don't like me, I'm going to hate you.
ALICE: If this was an accident,
you wouldn't leave the love of your life bleeding out on
the floor of a dining room.
It's just shattered our whole family.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dane speaking]
He would constantly message her on Facebook,
would message her via text messages,
he would call her, and she would ignore it.
[Dane speaking]
When he wasn't able to get ahold of Rowena,
he started sending me text messages, asking
why Rowena was ignoring him,
why she had so suddenly changed her mind
to back out of this relationship.
[Dane speaking]
He told me he would leave her alone.
[Dane speaking]
ROOSHAD: We were just living our lives, hoping that
he would just ignore her and go away.
[sniffles]
She said, "What's the worst that'll happen?
He'll shoot me with a rifle or put a rifle to my head."
[indistinct children shouting]
NARRATOR: It's August 10th, 1997, in Karachi, Pakistan.
It's a big night in the young
life of three-year-old Rowena Irani.
Her uncle, Cyrus Irani, is marrying his bride,
Nazneen, at the Metropole Hotel.
TORANJ: Cyrus's wedding was very exciting.
Rowena was excited to have so many family
members from abroad and gifts and music and food,
so I think she was more
excited for that than actually the wedding.
NARRATOR: The wedding is a Zoroastrian ceremony.
Zoroastrianism is a religion that originates
from ancient Persia, modern-day Iran.
Rowena's father, Behram, holds her hand.
Her mother, Toranj,
and seven-year-old brother, Rooshad, followed behind.
Zoroastrian weddings, just like in any other weddings,
you know, the groom is there first,
and he waits for the bride.
This is a little procession, the bridegroom entering
the hotel, and we are walking with Cyrus until he sits down.
So now it is Cyrus's bride, Nazneen, who is entering
the hotel, and this is her side of the family.
Rowena is very impressed not only with the dresses,
but I think she wants to be in the limelight.
I think she thinks it's all about her.
She thought it was her big day
instead of Cyrus and Nazneen's big day.
NARRATOR: At the wedding,
the bride and groom are seated as the ceremony begins.
ROOSHAD: The front seat of the banquet hall is usually
reserved for family members,
and sitting on the corner there,
I think Rowena and I have the best seat.
She probably wanted to go run off while I'm keeping her in
her seat to make sure she doesn't run off.
NARRATOR: Rooshad has watched over his little sister ever
since she was born on February 18th, 1994.
TORANJ: Rooshad was always very protective, and they had a very,
very sweet bond with each other.
They were always together.
ROOSHAD: Growing up, Rowena and I were close.
We would hang out with the same people.
We had the same friends.
So we saw each other every day.
We were very close then as a family.
TORANJ: Rooshad on the whole was a good boy.
He was obedient, you know, he would listen.
But Rowena was stubborn and sassy and...
a little difficult.
You know, she had a mind of her own,
let's put it that way.
NARRATOR: After the ceremony,
Cyrus and Nazneen cut their wedding cake.
TORANJ: Rowena is tired by that time.
But when she saw the cake, Rowena thought that she was
the one who was going to cut the cake, and I kept on telling
her that it's not your birthday,
you're not the one who's gonna cut the cake.
It's Uncle Cyrus and Nazneen, because it's their wedding.
ROOSHAD: See Rowena's trying to get into the middle of all of
the attention and potentially get the first piece of
that cake.
She enjoyed being the center of attention.
TORANJ: Living in Pakistan is not easy.
It's very little choices for education.
NARRATOR: The Irani family applied for U.S. citizenship
in 1989.
Fifteen years later, in 2004,
U.S. citizenship
and immigration services approves their application.
TORANJ: When we thought about the children, that Rooshad
and Rowena can benefit a secure life,
a happy life, whatever education, where --
whichever university they want to go to, they can study.
NARRATOR: The Irani family moves from Karachi to Wichita, Kansas.
It's a huge transition for everyone,
especially 14-year-old Rooshad.
Moving to a Midwest school at the age of 14
from Pakistan three years after 9/11 was very difficult.
Most people assume that if you're from Pakistan
or a Middle Eastern country, you are a Muslim.
All they saw was a brown kid who was not Hispanic,
had a last name of Irani,
and just came from Pakistan, and so I was a easy
target for them,
and the same was for Rowena, as well.
It wasn't all rainbows and sunshine
and butterflies as we were hoping for.
NARRATOR: Dad, Behram, secures a job in logistics
for a major retailer.
Mom, Toranj, becomes a primary school teacher.
TORANJ: So in 2006, we could actually
feel our life getting a little better.
We moved into our house.
That was the very first house in Wichita.
It very much felt like a new
beginning and a new chapter in our lives.
I made some close friends when I was on the swim team
for my high school.
It was easier for Rowena to make friends.
Rowena was what you would consider
an all-American teenager.
She had the American accent down, she had the songs,
the music, the movies,
the clothing, the attitude, it was all there.
NARRATOR: Rowena joins her junior high school's
Reserve Officer Training Corps in 2009.
She soon earns a place on the color guard drill team.
It competes against other teams from across Kansas.
This would be our junior varsity.
Rowena is the person carrying the black-cased flag.
I am the person carrying the red-cased flag.
This is just a presentation of how
well in time and well in line the team can keep.
Rowena was not interested in joining military.
She just wanted to join the JROTC just for fun.
The running joke always was that she chose it
so she wouldn't have to get on the school bus
and would be driven to the school by me.
[drill team member calling]
ROOSHAD: Her passion for it brought Rowena
a lot of confidence to be able to make friends
and a lot of discipline in her life,
to be able to make it through high school without issues.
Rowena and Courtney got very close during their ROTC time.
We would joke around and have
a lot of fun during those practices.
I did not know a single person that did not like Rowena.
She had the most friendly, outgoing personality
that I have ever seen.
[audience applause]
TORANJ: Rowena graduated from Wichita Heights High School,
May of 2012.
ROOSHAD: She was admitted into
the Wichita State University's psychology program.
NARRATOR: Rooshad lived at home during his time at college.
Rowena chooses to do the same.
[screaming and laughing]
ROOSHAD: This happened quite often, almost on a weekly basis,
where Rowena, my mom, and I, even my dad,
would just play fight around just like this.
[shouts indistinctly]
Quit hitting mom -- it's so rude!
TORANJ: It doesn't seem like a mother, daughter,
and son relationship.
It seems like three friends are
having a silly, fun time together.
I was seeing her grow, I was seeing her every single day.
We came to the U.S. to give my children
a better, secured, happy,
good education environment, but we should have
just stayed in Karachi.
NARRATOR: 20-year-old Rowena Irani prepares to do
the ice bucket challenge to raise awareness of the disease,
ALS.
The Ice Bucket Challenge was like
every other person was doing it.
She had to take buckets of ice and pour it all over herself.
The way the ALS challenge was designed was you
were to nominate three other people to do it.
And the third person she nominated was Dane Owens.
On your head.
[laughing]
ROOSHAD: Rowena met Dane Owens through me and my close group
of friends.
We used to hang out with Dane at his parents' lake house.
His parents were very wealthy and owned this very,
very beautiful, luxurious lake house.
Dane was active duty in the U.S. Army.
He had spent at least one tour
overseas in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
I knew he was involved in some type
of an explosion that resulted in a head injury,
after which he was moved from
the active military into a reserve status.
And at that point, he started
taking classes at Wichita State University.
COURTNEY: After Rowena met Dane for the first time,
she had told me, you know, just casual of,
"Yeah, I have a little crush on Dane,
but it's not gonna go anywhere at this time."
I know that she continued to text him.
They would message on Facebook, tag each other
in different photos or memes that would be online.
Rowena's priority was school, setting herself up for success,
for her future.
Romance was never at the forefront for Rowena.
Rowena always used to say that she was going to never need
a man or want a man in her life.
She would just retire on some beach house with two dogs,
a German shepherd and a pug.
Her dog, Max, was this roly poly pug
that she treated as a baby.
She loved this dog.
Rowena preferred to stay in her PJs and watch a movie
at home and play with Max instead of
being with her friends.
♪♪
At this time,
Rowena wanted to try university life, because
university life is so different than staying at home.
So she wanted to transfer from Wichita State University
to Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.
COURTNEY: Out of pure coincidence, while Rowena
was studying psychology up at K-State...
Dane was at K-State as well, studying.
He was getting a degree in social services.
He and Rowena would meet up once in
a while and just continued to maintain a good friendship.
NARRATOR: Rowena develops a kidney infection
after two months away at college.
She moves back home to Wichita.
COURTNEY: Once she moved back home,
she and Dane really started to
reconnect over text message, him checking in on her,
making sure that she was okay and that she was recovering.
He would let her know, "Hey, I'm gonna be in town,"
and she would follow up with, "Okay,
well while you're in town, do you want to go hang out?"
And he would agree.
And then the time and date would come for them
to go hang out, and he would flake out on her.
For her, that was incredibly frustrating,
because she knew he was in town,
but he couldn't make that time for her.
She finally just said, "You're popping in and out.
I'm done with it. You can't keep doing this."
And she kind of put him to
the back of her mind and started moving forward.
NARRATOR: Rowena studies hard for her degree in Psychology.
She became so serious about her studies,
the way I have never, ever seen her before.
She decided that she wanted to
do her masters in teen psychology.
COURTNEY: Part of the curriculum involves some
practical experience.
You had to know how
children reacted given different circumstances.
So she asked if she could do
a little test with my daughter.
It looked like Riley did incredibly well.
And so Rowena was like, oh, okay,
we've got a smart kid on our hands here.
I was really very proud at that point that her head
was focused in studies.
She wanted to do her Masters, and she was helping children.
Stop.
We were seeing a big difference in her,
and we were very, very proud of what she was achieving.
But...
that just changed within a few weeks.
[indistinct singing and rhythmic clapping]
TORANJ: May 25th, 2016,
was Rooshad's wedding.
We had a lot of guests coming
from out of state or other countries.
There was a lot of noise, a lot of music and food.
It was a very festive, very happy environment
for everybody.
NARRATOR: Two years earlier, Rooshad joined the police
in Derby, a town 10 miles south of Wichita.
He plans to move out of the Irani family home
after the wedding to live with his new bride in Derby.
It was a little bittersweet.
Rooshad is getting married, and he'll
live on his own with his wife.
He won't be in the house as much
as I would have wanted him to be.
So it was mixed feelings.
We had quite a few local friends
who attended the wedding.
Dane came back for the wedding from K-State.
He was still a student there.
Rowena spent quite a bit of time with Dane at the wedding.
I do recall them sitting together quite a few
times and being on the dance floor together, as well.
♪♪
NARRATOR: Two months after the wedding,
Rowena tells her family
that she and Dane are officially dating.
Dane was very kind, very sweet.
The first date he took her on was very well thought out.
He made an entire day out of it and picked her up very
early in the morning and didn't bring her home until
very late in the evening.
What I heard from Rooshad that Dane was a nice guy
and very respectful, very nice.
Rooshad said, "Mom, you don't have to worry.
"I know him since so many years, and he's a good guy.
"We've been to his house many times.
His parents are so good."
There was a long-distance aspect to their relationship,
because Rowena was here in Wichita,
and Dane was in Manhattan, and it was about
a 2.5-hour drive.
♪♪
Dane was putting an effort in to see Rowena.
After about a month into the relationship,
I believe that Dane really started pressing Rowena
to take their relationship a little bit more seriously.
NARRATOR: Rowena receives a one-month
anniversary card from Dane.
Inside is a letter that describes his feelings for her.
ROOSHAD: Dane unexpectedly told Rowena that he wanted
to marry her by the end of the year,
and he wasn't getting any younger, and he wanted kids.
COURTNEY: Rowena really had the impression that Dane was
kind of go-with-the-flow and just, you know,
we're cool where we're at, we're gonna be all right.
But he was ready for something a lot more serious
than she was.
ROOSHAD: Rowena told him, "I don't want a marriage.
I don't want kids until part of my career has been set."
She told Dane to back away,
give her some space, and let her figure things out.
I think Dane respected the conversation
for probably all of a week or two.
When Dane started talking marriage again,
Rowena really decided it's time to pump the brakes,
like, we cannot go any further.
You can't let this talk go of us being together,
being in a relationship getting married.
You won't let that go.
Rowena realized she had to end the relationship.
Dane did not take the news well.
He continued to try and text Rowena, to call Rowena.
Dane would constantly message her on Facebook,
would message her via text messages.
He would call her, and she would ignore it.
When Dane wasn't able to get ahold of Rowena,
he started sending me text messages,
asking why Rowena was ignoring him.
Why she had so suddenly changed her mind
to back out of this relationship.
I asked her if she wanted me to intervene.
She said "No, not quite yet."
And she said, "What's the worst that'll happen?
He'll shoot me with a rifle or point a rifle to my head."
To me, being her older brother and a law enforcement officer,
I did not think that was funny.
I texted Dane on the 30th
of September, asking him to leave her alone,
their relationship was over, and that they needed to
move on.
I told Dane if he was going to continue pestering her
or messaging Rowena,
I was going to file a harassment charge against him,
and Dane told me that wasn't necessary.
He would leave her alone.
We were just living our lives, hoping that
he would just ignore her and go away.
TORANJ: The text messages and everything stopped,
and we thought, fine,
he's gone. He's gone away.
He's gone back to Manhattan.
But we didn't know he had other plans.
-[phone ringing] -[Toranj speaking]
[operator speaking]
[Toranj speaking]
[siren wailing]
Cedric County emergency dispatchers, our 911,
received a call.
A lady had been found in her house with an injury.
TORANJ: Rowena normally comes to pick me up at 3:30 from school.
There was no sign of Rowena.
My coworker, she said, let me take you home.
When I opened the garage door...
I saw Rowena
near the dining table in a pool of blood.
ROBERT: When the officers arrived, they found Miss Irani
on the floor in the dining room area, just outside the kitchen.
MAN: Okay.
The injury was to her head.
[officer speaking]
[Behram speaking]
[officer speaking]
Miss Irani was unconscious.
She was breathing.
Didn't appear it was accidental.
It definitely appeared as if
somebody had done something to her.
NARRATOR: EMS rushes Rowena to the hospital.
[indistinct] at the hospital.
NARRATOR: Doctors CT scan Rowena's head to reveal
the cause of her injury.
I went to the hospital -- it was about a 15-minute drive.
I think I made it there in six,
because I was flying down the highway.
There, there were several officers present at the door,
and they escorted me into a interview room,
away from the trauma bay and everything.
[detective speaking]
ROOSHAD: Yes.
[detective speaking]
[Rooshad speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Rooshad speaking]
ROOSHAD: About that time,
a medical staff member walks into the interview room
and told me I could go in and see her.
♪♪
NARRATOR: Rowena's CT scan has revealed
the extent of her head injury.
ROOSHAD: The neurosurgeon came in and said that she had
been shot and that it was a fatal head wound.
I didn't really register the words that were
being said, because I was just in shock.
I remember sitting down in a chair next to her,
just asking her to wake up, to say something.
TORANJ: When I went to the ICU unit,
I asked Rooshad,
did they already do surgery on Rowena?
And he held me by my shoulders.
He looked me in the eye, and he said,
"Mom, Rowena is not going to make it.'
Her brain is totally damaged.
There is nothing to operate on.
♪♪
To hear that your child is not
gonna make it, and that she was shot...
I crumbled down.
There was no hope for any improvement.
She was only alive because of the monitors.
NARRATOR: Doctors pronounced Rowena dead at 2:48 PM,
October 4th, 2016.
Forensics officers scour the Iranis' home for
clues to reveal the circumstances of
Rowena's shooting.
ALICE: At the scene,
what there wasn't, was a sign of struggle.
We didn't see anything, like, broken
or pushed or out of sorts,
and now they learn that it's gunshot, so
they're gonna be looking for a point of direction.
Crime scene discovered a small hole in the window.
It was at her height where the bullet would have gone in,
gone through the back of her head,
through the dining room window.
And they also found a casing from
a 45-caliber firearm near the fireplace.
[siren wailing]
[indistinct radio chatter]
When the officers received the information
about Dane Owens, we tasked officers to locate him.
[officer speaking]
ALICE: He comes to the door, appears drowsy,
and doesn't have a shirt on, has shorts on,
and his hand is in a sling, because he had
had shoulder surgery.
[officer speaking]
DANE: Yeah, Rowena?
[officer speaking]
ALICE: When they say that Rowena had been in an incident,
he didn't seem surprised.
Didn't ask how she was.
Didn't ask about the hospital.
Didn't ask a thing about her.
Kind of no reaction to that at all.
[officer speaking]
NARRATOR: Officers transport Dane
to Wichita PD for questioning.
[Robert speaking]
[Dane speaking]
[Robert speaking]
[Det. Schomaker speaking]
Mr. Owens would talk about his relationship with Miss Irani.
[Robert speaking]
ROBERT: The fact that Miss Irani broke up with him
he felt was somewhat of a slight to him.
[Robert speaking]
He wanted her to listen to him, and he
took the gun so that she would take him seriously.
[Robert speaking]
He left the house and went back to
his truck and then drove out of the neighborhood.
He threw the magazine into a pond.
He placed the gun under some rocks.
We had officers go out and recover that.
[Robert speaking]
After Mr. Owens explained to us the circumstances
of how he came in and the gun went off
when he was startled, I stepped out of the room
and obtained a fake gun.
[Robert speaking]
He was trying to explain how the gun was
against his right hand and in the sling itself.
He could not recreate a way for that gun to be in the sling
with his finger on the trigger
and for the gun to fire and strike Miss Irani where
it hit her in the head.
I just didn't feel like this was an unintentional discharge.
He went there intending to kill her.
[Robert speaking]
During the investigation, we talked to a number
of women who used to know Mr. Owens
to get background information about Mr. Owen's behaviors.
What his triggers are.
What led the motive behind what happened to Rowena.
[distorted woman's voice]
[Robert speaking]
[distorted woman's voice]
ROBERT: When we looked at the interviews
of women who had known Mr. Owens,
you could see that type of mentality of,
if you don't like me,
then I'm just gonna be horribly upset at you,
and I'm gonna hate you.
[distorted woman's voice]
ROBERT: What we see is a pattern.
He becomes very attached, too much so,
obsessively so, and that then when the women start
to separate themselves from him,
he becomes angry.
It's a personal attack against him.
NARRATOR: Dane Owens' trial for murder
begins on October 31st, 2018.
He says that the shooting was an accident.
He claims that a medical condition
caused him to pull the trigger
when Rowena startled him.
ALICE: His defense was because of trauma
that he had experienced in the military,
he had a reflex disorder with loud noises, labeled as PTSD.
NARRATOR: Owens told investigators that the pistol
was partially concealed within his sling when it fired.
Our version to the jury was different
than that because of where she was shot.
He said he had the gun in his sling,
and his sling was waist level.
If you're standing, and it goes off accidentally,
it would've hit her center mass.
But it would have had to been raised
high enough to be able to shoot her
in the area where she was struck, her head.
The gun was a semiautomatic, and so
that would have kicked out the shell casing.
So if the gun would have been in this sling,
it would have kicked the casing out in the sling.
If the gun was extended out of the sling,
the shell casing would have kicked into the house.
Didn't kick in the sling -- it kicked out.
NARRATOR: In his sling, Owens' gun is too low to fire
a bullet that goes through Rowena's head and the window
behind her.
The sling was in his right hand,
but he could fire with his left and chose to use his left.
He was able to use his good, working
arm on the night that Rowena was murdered.
If this was an accident, you would call and you'd get 911.
You'd get an ambulance.
You wouldn't leave the love of your life bleeding out on
the floor of a dining room for her mom to come and find her.
We went through hiding the evidence of what he did,
getting rid of her phone, getting rid of the gun.
Those are things that we argued to show
this was planned to kill her with premeditation.
On the day in question, he sat for over an hour
in the truck waiting for that time when she would come home.
He let himself in her house knowing that he wasn't
welcome there,
saw her standing in the dining room, and shot her in the head.
Looked at her, made a decision
to never render her any assistance whatsoever.
Take her phone, drive away,
dump the gun, dump her phone.
Dane couldn't stand rejection and wanted to have control
enough over her at gunpoint to convince her either to stay
with him or that if she wasn't gonna be with him,
she wasn't gonna be with anybody else and killed her.
NARRATOR: On November 6th, 2018, the jury finds Dane
guilty of felony murder in the first degree.
The judge sentences him to 25 years to life
for first degree murder, with the possibility of parole
and 43 months for aggravated burglary.
This person should never, ever, ever
come out of the prison. Never.
It was not an accident by any means,
and he should be not given the chance for parole.
He didn't give my daughter a chance.
♪♪
We came to the U.S. to give my children
a better secured, happy,
good education environment
and the least that I was expecting,
that somebody is going to come in my house and take her life.
A big part of us has died.
It's just broken.
It's just shattered our whole family.
ROOSHAD: Rowena was an organ donor.
We had no idea that she had made that decision on
her 18th birthday when she went to get her
driver's license.
Her lungs, heart, liver, and her corneas
were transplanted to other recipients.
That's a way of Rowena letting me know that she is still here,
still making decisions.
We have the Rowena Irani Psychology Scholarship set up
at the Wichita State University,
and it's geared toward students who are looking
for a career in psychology.
TORANJ: It was just so beautiful that there
is a legacy that holds her name.
And so,
you know, though she's not with us,
but her legacy will live on forever and ever.