In an 8-by-10 cell reserved for prison visits, a young man sits up in his chair, his eyes locked on yours. He wants to tell a Bible story.

It's about a prosperous man who lost everything — his 10 children to death, his good health, his many servants and all his possessions. But still he remains faithful to God and, in the end, is blessed with more than he had before.

"It was just a story that stuck out to me," says Lucky Iromuanya.

Lucky needs the hope of Job's story. Lucky also has lost it all.

Job, of course, never committed such a self-damaging act, never unveiled a .32-caliber derringer at a house party and triggered a shot that took a woman's life and cracked so many hearts.

The victim was Jenna Cooper, a 21-year-old soccer player at Nebraska.

The bullet — claimed by Lucky to be a warning shot for being threatened after he was wrongly accused of stealing shot glasses — ricocheted off Nolan Jenkins' skull and into Jenna's throat. She died soon thereafter. It was a year ago today.

While wonderful stories about Jenna emerged from family and friends in the months that followed, little was known about Lucky other than his mug shot, taken at 4 in the morning after the shooting.

The 23-year-old's braided hair was frizzy. His face was tired, his eyes glassed over. The picture was how we met Lucky, the man who killed Jenna.

"He wasn't a person anymore," says Julie Iromuanya, his sister. "He was just a black guy with cornrows and a bandanna."

And soon, he was convicted of second-degree murder by — to the disdain of the defense — an all-white jury.

Lancaster County District Judge John A. Colborn gave him a life sentence for  Jenna's death, with 25 to 35 years tacked on for the attempted murder of Jenkins.

Opinions divided. To some, it was tough believing Lucky had premeditated Jenna's death, especially  considering the bullet had been deflected her way. Perhaps, as the Iromuanya family suggests, manslaughter and not second-degree murder should have been the charge. But to others, it was as simple as this: A life was taken. A life sentence should be served.

And in the setting that mattered, the courtroom, it was that thinking which ruled, that thinking which had Lucky trying to hold back the tears when the judge told him the hole would be his home for life.

His mom, Helen, says Lucky once had the kind of smile that could lift her to the clouds even after she came home from working the night shift. But there was nothing left to smile about.

"I can understand the anger, even from the judge," Lucky says in his first media interview since the shooting. "I can understand a lot of the anger, so I don't really blame too many people more than I blame myself, because I feel like I'm smarter than that. Even though it happened so quick, I still feel like I'm smarter than that.

"It does hurt, because I know one time is enough for me to learn. But Jenna Cooper didn't get another chance, too, so all I can keep doing is praying."

It was terrible television for a mother to watch.

Words don't come out when you see the images she saw on her TV that night of April 25. You just stare. You have too many thoughts working. They're all leading nowhere.

There's a special news report and there's your son, the one who turned your wheels like no one else could. The newsman says he might have shot Jenna.

"She's a soccer player. She's a soccer player. I know her," one of your daughters screams in panic.

And then that awful mug shot of Lucky appears.

Your mouth works just for a second. "That's not my son," you say.

This can't be. It just can't …

The phone rings minutes after your world tips. It's Lucky, calling from jail.

He wants to say something. You want to say something. Impossible. There is only crying.

It's the following days when the mind starts to wrap around the details. You beat yourself up with questions: Why'd he have to go to that party? If I only would have re-braided his hair that night like I was going to do. … How could this all stem from some stupid shot glasses? Lucky had a gun?

"I didn't know he had it until this happened," Helen says.

Lucky says his friends kept telling him to get a gun for protection. In the year that preceded Jenna's death, Helen says Lucky was shot at, had his car broken into twice and found three bullet holes in his girlfriend's car.

"They were just some guys I didn't get along with," Lucky says when asked who those shots came from.

This is the point where eyebrows will raise. What crowd was this guy running with?

Helen maintains that Lucky  surrounded himself with good friends,  ones he had known since grade school. She dismisses the idea that Lucky looked for trouble.

"He's really a very scared boy," Helen says.

Scared is how Lucky says he felt the night of that party.

While some testified in court that Jenkins was approaching Lucky to apologize about the accusations of stealing shot glasses, Lucky believes Jenkins and three or four friends were going to pummel him in a fight.

"Honestly, what bugged me is I just feel like if I never had the gun, Jenna would still be alive," Lucky says. "I do 100 percent believe I would have gotten beat up real good at that party, but at least Jenna would still be alive. I can go home and heal and I wouldn't be here (in jail). I would be with my family."

Lucky says he had never heard of Jenna before that night and didn't know she had been shot until he and his friend were driving away. He received a call from the girl who had invited him to the party.

"She just told me a girl had been shot. I didn't even know it was Jenna. I was shocked," Lucky says. "When you have it in your mind that no one's been hurt, you're out of here, and then you get a call saying someone's been hit? You don't believe it. It doesn't really click in. You're like, ‘What?'"

According to Lucky, his initial response on the phone: "Did you get an ambulance?"

Soon after, he was picked up by police while waiting at a street a few blocks from his house. He had planned to have a friend pick him up so he could discuss the night's events, but authorities arrived first and found him with the gun.

A knock came on Helen's door a few minutes later, waking her up  in the wee hours of that Sunday.

Helen says she answered the door and was greeted by a policeman who informed her that they were going to take Lucky to the station to question him about possessing a gun. She says the policeman did not mention a shooting.

Though alarmed, Helen says, she went back to bed.

Later that Sunday, police returned with a search warrant. Helen assumed they were looking to see if Lucky had any more guns and led them to his room.

Starting to grow more nervous, she asked the police what was going on with her son. Again, she says the police didn't mention anything but the gun they had found.

Helen would have no clue of the shooting until the TV told her.

Ask the man who was convicted.

He had watched CourtTV and made a habit of reading the legal stories in the newspapers.

He had studied criminal justice at Northeast Community College. He had worked with troubled juveniles and planned on making a career out of it. He wanted to play the role of big brother, keep them from that dark place where everyone else was sure they'd end.

Ask Lucky.

Ask him if his sentence was fair.

"When I used to watch TV, watch the court and read the newspapers. I'd read the stuff reporters write and just be so angry at that person like, ‘How can you do something like this?' Or I'd watch the TV and hear the sentence and feel like they deserved it," Lucky says.

But now?

"I don't know what I feel I should have gotten. I know it was an accident, but at the same time, it was an accident that should have never happened. I do believe I should have been punished, but I just don't know how much time I should have gotten."

His mother and sister think the trial was cloaked in racism — from the selection of the all-white jury, to the way they felt Lucky was inaccurately portrayed as a black thug who produced three children out of wedlock but didn't care about them.

"Lucky was not convicted of second-degree murder. He was convicted of being a black man with a gun in his hand and being in a place where he shouldn't have been," says Julie, currently a grad student in Lincoln. "That's the first thing the media tried to say when this thing happened. They tried to say he didn't belong at that party, he wasn't invited, he didn't know anyone. And then, later on, you find out he was invited. They didn't question why anyone else was there. They questioned why he was there because he was black."

The Iromuanyas also felt Jenkins and his friends were never taken to task in court for trying to instigate a fight with Lucky.

"They could have beaten him to death," Helen says. "People don't even think about it like that. It could have been the next day you hear on the news about a gangster who went to steal some shot glasses and was killed. But (the prosecution) created a balance of, ‘Oh, look at the poor white girl. Look at the black guy.' That's all they see."

Adds Lucky: "It was hard sitting in court listening to each witness tell their story, listen to them tell the truth to a certain extent, but you could tell they were trying to keep  (Jenkins) from getting in trouble."

Helen is most bothered, however, by Judge Colborn, who she  deems "unfair."

"When you have 20 to life (as a possible sentence), why did he go to life," Helen says. "Not 30? Not 40? Not 50? Lucky would have accepted manslaughter. He was sorry for what happened. It wasn't planned. He did not plan it. He did not kidnap and rape and torture the girl. Why did he think he would give him life?" 

Another point of contention is that Jenna's mother, Ellen, was allowed to testify about her daughter. Her emotional testimony brought tears to the eyes of several jurors.

It not only moved the jurors, but Lucky, who sobbed as she spoke.

"I told myself I'd have self-control, but when I saw her up there I just broke down," Lucky says. "That's the thing my mom always said about me, ‘I can put myself in other people's shoes.' So when I saw Jenna's mom crying up there, in that moment, I looked at her and felt for her just like she was my mom."

Lucky says he was pleased he was able to tell Ellen he was sorry in court and, though he hasn't yet written the family a letter of remorse, he'd like to later on.

As to how she feels for Jenna's mother, Helen says: "I sympathize with her. Anybody who lost a little, beautiful young girl like that should be emotional and I am too for her."

Helen wanted a boy.

Maybe Helen wasn't praying for it, but she was hoping, wishing, something.

Three lovely daughters and another son would come later and she would rejoice in them, but when her first child came out a boy, she felt lucky. He was Lucky.

"He was my man," Helen says. "Some of the kids used to joke with him, ‘Why you have a dog's name?' But he was my Lucky, a mama's boy. People just don't know how Lucky was important to me. I didn't have a husband around or boyfriend. He was everything to me.

"When I go to work in the middle of the night, who was here watching over the family? It was him. He was the peacemaker in my house. People just don't know how much is inside of him. This family isn't about gangs or the ghetto. Everybody here went to school. I worked hard on him. He worked hard on me. He's my Lucky boy."

Helen came to America from Nigeria in 1980, following her husband, Fred Sr. Both came here to attend college at Nebraska-Lincoln, where Helen got a degree in food science.

When Lucky was about 10, his dad went back to Nigeria. He returned to Lincoln last year, but for those years he was gone, the oldest Iromuanya child claimed "Man of the House" status.

It was Lucky who made sure mom knew if Fred Jr. was acting up. It was Lucky who got his siblings up for school if mom wasn't home from work. It was Lucky who took to the youngest, Charity, and worked with her on basketball.

And now, for him to be gone? For the Ku Klux Klan to stage a rally on the steps of the Capitol and call him out as being the perfect illustration of what's wrong with the black man? Are the family members of the murderer not victims, too?

"No matter if Lucky's alive, people don't understand how I feel. I feel like Lucky is gone, dead, buried," says Helen, her voice rising and tears streaming down her cheek. "That's how I feel. I feel like this is a torture, gradually killing you until you die.

"I don't know how I'm living today. I think I'm just dead. My mind, my thinking, my walking around, it's not the same. I don't think it will ever be the same. I can't keep my mind off (the shooting) … I'm not happy like I used to be before. I don't smile like I used to smile before. I can't just feel like somebody."

The letter was made out to Charity. From big brother.

Lucky had heard she had bottomed out. She didn't know if she wanted to keep playing basketball. Her brother's trial had zapped everything. The innocence that's supposed to surround high school had been lost; so too was the bounce in her step — the bounce she had used to blow by defenders.

The Lincoln Northeast girls basketball team was in the midst of the kind of magical season you dream about.

But how could Charity enjoy the run? The brother who had taught her so much about the game was in a publicized trial, was even sentenced to life in prison on the day of one of her tournament games.

It was just basketball. Given all that's happened, a silly game really doesn't mean anything, right?

Then the letter came.

Brother said he needed her to step up. He needed her to dominate on the court. He needed it as much as she did.

"After she read that letter, everything just changed," Helen says. "It's like a miracle."

And one Saturday in March, the Northeast Rockets finished an undefeated season and won a state championship.

"She just cried afterwards," Helen says. "She carried so many things inside of her."

The brother that taught her so much saw only a quarter of that championship game. That's all they'd let him see.

But during the fourth quarter of that game, Lucky prayed and prayed. They needed this.

When some inmates had told him the good news, that little sis was a state champion, Lucky had salvaged a slice of contentment.

But contentment is fleeting in Lucky's new world.

There was that one day when he got to see his son, now four months old, for the first time during visitation hours.

Then visitation ended and the child left and Lucky was left locked inside with his thoughts, his prayers, his Bible stories, but without the braids. He doesn't look like the man in that mug shot.

That picture, there's something wrong with it. It's … it's not him. Don't they know it's not him?

"I used to look at mug shots of other people in the paper and be like, ‘Whoa, they just look like monsters.' I know people thought that when they saw my mug shot."

Lucky's voice softens.

"It's startling when I see that picture. It's startling to know that's me, just startling. I just wish people could see a better picture of me."

Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7438 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.