For days, Daniel Kovacevic has caused an uproar in Akron with his mysterious, well-armed strolls through mostly black neighborhoods.
Kovacevic, 25, a white man, has startled University of Akron students, parents of schoolchildren and business owners when they see him strapped with a military rifle and pistol.
Kovacevic doesn’t talk much about himself, but he told the Akron Beacon Journal on Friday that the guns he carries are for self-protection and that he poses no threat to the law-abiding community.
“When a criminal sees someone walking around with a gun, they’re less likely to do something,” said Kovacevic, sitting inside Kangaroo Kutz barbershop, the scene of an explosive encounter the day before.
The owner of the East Exchange barbershop — Deone Slater, who is black — confronted Kovacevic on the sidewalk outside his shop Thursday, fearing the gun-carrying man might open fire on campus or at a nearby elementary school.
Akron police soon arrived.
But it wasn’t Slater who called them.
It was Kovacevic. He wanted police to escort him safely by the barber, who refused to let him pass.
“I didn’t know if this guy was ISIS or what,” Slater said.
Slater said the officers told him to go back inside his shop because Kovacevic had broken no law.
In Ohio, there are no regulations against legal gun owners openly displaying their weapons while carrying them.
Police response
Akron police have received about eight calls from fearful residents who have seen Kovacevic walking through their neighborhoods with guns, Lt. Rick Edwards said.
“We’re in a pickle, stuck in the middle,” Edwards said. “We can’t violate his rights.”
Edwards said Akron police were trained during the past couple of years about how to handle open-carry gun owners. Officers will respond to each residential call about an open-carry gun owner to make sure that he or she is following the law. Police also will try to learn the identity of the gun owner to make sure the person has no felonies or other issues that could make it illegal to own a gun.
But Ohio is one of 31 states that allows open carry. Unless legislators pass a law limiting or forbidding it, there’s nothing police can do, Edwards said.
After police arrived at the barbershop Thursday, Kovacevic continued his walk with a pistol holstered to his side and the same type of rifle used by the Israeli army slung across his back.
Kangaroo Kutz posted a video of the sidewalk confrontation on its Facebook page that went viral. In the video, Slater — who keeps a plastic bucket in his barber shop with a handwritten sign charging 25 cents for ever cuss word spoken — is livid and yelling f-bombs at Kovacevic as police try to defuse the situation.
Online discussion
On Friday morning, Kovacevic reached out to Slater via Facebook.
“I am willing to walk with and loan one of my guns of your choice to you or someone you know,” provided several conditions are met, Kovacevic said in an online message.
Among the conditions:
• The walk must be filmed and posted online, unedited.
• Kovacevic could refuse a gun to anyone he didn’t trust, like a murderer or rapist who has “not repented since the event.”
• The guns are returned to Kovacevic at the end of the walk.
Slater responded to Kovacevic and eventually invited him back to the barbershop so they could talk.
The mood at Kangaroo Kutz was tense Friday morning. Stylist Perignon White trembled as she tried to make sense of Kovacevic, who sat with his guns next to a wall signed by scores of university students and others who get their hair cut at the shop.
“Who sent you, who sent you here [to Akron] to do this,” White asked him.
Kovacevic didn’t answer. He tried to keep the focus on guns and what he says is the right of every American to openly carry weapons. That right, he said, should extend to inmates inside prisons, although he acknowledged that could get complicated.
Although he’s never been a crime victim, Kovacevic said, he decided to start carrying a pistol a couple of years ago, including a time he lived in Arizona.
Kovacevic said he added the assault rifle to his ensemble a few weeks ago after a run-in on South Main Street in Akron.
“A man glanced at the pistol and asked for the time,” Kovacevic said, adding he thought the man might try to steal the gun.
If the man would have taken the pistol, he would have had nothing to defend himself, Kovacevic said. With the rifle, he has a backup.
“I believe things would be better if everyone had guns,” Kovacevic said, adding that each gun owner should be trained how to use the firearm responsibly.
Different approaches
By appearances, the soft-spoken, slim, cautious and serious Kovacevic seems to have little in common with the barber, a gregarious, muscular man who bluntly says what he’s thinking.
And yet they both long for safety.
Kovacevic thinks the pistol in his holster and an assault rifle on his strap help protect him.
Slater said he wears a tie and has every day since he was in kindergarten because people — including police — respect him more. He keeps a mobile phone in a holster on one hip, a stun gun hidden in a holster on the other.
“If it was me, or another man of color, and he had a rifle on him parading up and down the street, he would be dead or in jail,” Slater said.
Kovacevic said he sees past race and believes his gun-carrying walks involve a single issue — a man’s right to openly carry a gun to protect himself, black or white.
But for Slater and others in the barbershop Friday, Kovacevic and his weapons raise myriad other issues, including racism, police shootings of unarmed black men, this week’s San Bernardino shooting, school shootings, last month’s Paris terrorist attacks and Akron crime.
“I’m scared, I’m scared,” barber stylist White blurted out, trying again to get Kovacevic to understand her fear. “I’m raising a daughter, a boy, and this scares me.”
Kovacevic told White the Bible says not to give into fear and then got up to leave.
He and Slater agreed to keep talking.
After Kovacevic was gone, Gerald Butler, who owns an Akron home renovations company, walked in.
He didn’t want a haircut. He had seen the video of Thursday’s confrontation and wanted a selfie with Slater, whose action Thursday to stop Kovacevic had made him a hero to some.
“What [Kovacevic] is doing is just not conducive to bringing safety to Akron,” Butler said, wrapping an arm around Slater and posing for a picture.
Slater shook his head Friday after the selfie seeker left his shop.
“I invited [Kovacevic] here because I was just trying to turn a negative into a positive,” Slater said, glancing out his front window as university students passed by. “I guess I’m just glad he didn’t shoot up the building.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.