The California baker who was dragged to her death during a robbery in Oakland last week would have been against the criminals facing prison time, according to the victim’s friends and family.
Jen Angel was declared dead Thursday evening, according to a statement from her friends that was obtained by KRON-TV in San Francisco.
The news came days after she was the victim of a Monday robbery in which thieves broke into her car and stole her purse in broad daylight.
Ms. Angel chased the suspects to their getaway car but got caught in the vehicle’s door as it drove away. She was dragged more than 50 feet before smashing her head on the sidewalk, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
She was taken to a hospital and placed in the ICU. After two failed attempts at removing her from life support, she was declared legally dead.
The brutal circumstances of Ms. Angel’s death don’t change what her loved ones say should happen to the perpetrators, who remain at large.
“We are really trying to orient towards her brilliant life, and that actually, she is not a person who would support the policing and imprisonment of the people who harmed her,” Emily Harris, who works as an anti-prison director, told KGO-TV, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco.
Ms. Harris told the Chronicle separately that it doesn’t mean that Ms. Angel‘s friends and family don’t want the perpetrators to be held accountable, but “what [that] could look like isn’t about putting a person into further harm … [but] understanding how we’re going to prevent this from happening to the next Jen Angel.”
Police told the newspaper Friday that the incident is being investigated as a homicide.
Ms. Angel was known as a community organizer, a punk journalist and a person with a lifelong commitment to restorative justice — a practice in which a meeting is organized between victims and offenders that can be supervised by community members.
