Black women in Houston face a deadly domestic violence surge – by Laura Onyeneho
The Houston-area hairstylist, entrepreneur, and mother who goes by Nikki had been with viral sketch comedian Uncle Stanley Joe since she was 12. They had been married for 20 years. She knew his anger. She had learned to read his moods, to time her questions, to shrink herself to keep the peace. None of it was enough that night.
“I always knew that I was going to eventually post the video to expose him,” Nikki said in an interview with the Defender Network. “And it was just not to expose him, it was also to help others who are dealing with domestic violence, and also to hold my feet to the fire to never go back.”
The video Nikki posted was not even the worst of it. It was one of the “mildest” experiences of abuse that she shared with the public.
Her story landed in the middle of a month that has stunned the country.
In April 2026 alone, Dr. Cerina Wanzer Fairfax, a Virginia dentist and mother of two, was killed by her estranged partner days after being awarded full custody of their children. In Shreveport, La., a man shot and killed eight children, seven of them his own, in what police called an entirely domestic incident. Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer was tragically found shot to death by her partner in her home. And the body counts continue to increase.
Black women across this country and right here in Houston are being killed by the men who share their beds, their children, and their last names. And in most of those cases, the signs were there long before the trigger was pulled…Read the full story Here by the Defender Network, a Black Press Publication in Houston, Texas.
