"She would usually be sitting outside every morning when I would walk to work and I'd stop and talk to her," said Johnnie Demeritt, a 55-year-old woman who grew up and still lives in a home across the street and a couple of houses down from Golden. "My walk this morning was hard."

Satchell was the nephew of Demeritt, who said after receiving unsatisfactory answers as to why Stem killed her 28-year-old relative, she's skeptical the truth will ever come out about what happened between Golden and Stem.

"There's nothing we can do about it because [Hearne police] are going to do what they want anyway," she said. "They don't have your back in any kind of way."

Demeritt said there have long been tensions between the black community and Hearne police. Both Golden and Satchell were black; Stem is white.

Andrew Washington, one of Golden's other neighbors, who said he heard several consecutive shots fired Tuesday evening, agreed with Demeritt. "If you have no type of understanding of how to relate to the black community, you don't need to be a police officer in Hearne," Washington said.

He described Golden as a grandmother figure and said he met her 25 years ago when he moved into his wife's family home. Washington's 61-year-old wife, Clem, said she knew Golden her whole life.