Officer Owens is a GCPD officer as well as one of the first victims of Scarecrow's Fear Toxin.
Incident Reports
Early Life
Officer Owens grew up in Keystone City. While in college he was known to try mountain-climbing from time to time. In one occasion, he fell resulting in him being laid up for nearly four months.
Eventually he joined the KCPD. At some point, he met a woman named Ellen, whom he would eventually marry and have kids, including a son named Tyler.
When Owens received transfer orders, he moved his entire family to Gotham. Ellen was very hesitant thinking Gotham is no place to raise a child. To ease Ellen's mind, Commissioner Gordon promised to make sure that Tyler went to the highly prestigious McCallum Academy.
After Arkham City Incident
After the events of Protocol 10, Ellen's doubts resurfaced. The honeymoon period was over. Owens convinced her to stick it out for another year. If things didn't get better, he would move his family back home.
Before Arkham Knight Incident
Nine months later, he took his family to see the Lady of Gotham. He was confident that they would make it until the end of the year. By this point, his wife was about five months pregnant.
On October 30th, Owens got permission from Gordon to go to Pauli's Diner to grab something to eat. He was introduced to Batman by Gordon.
Arkham Knight Incident
True to his word, Officer Owens went over for a bite to eat at Pauli's Diner that same night. However, one of the patrons informed him that someone was smoking in the corner booth, despite the diner’s non-smoking policy. Owens went to take care of it, and confronted the smoking patron. Suddenly, the person grabs Owens, showing a horribly deformed face, and threw him aside. He saw the diner as a hellish nightmare as he was exposed to Scarecrow's Fear Toxin alongside the other people in the diner. As he saw one of the individuals heading towards him, Owens took out his gun but was then forced to engage in a struggle with the individual. The individual was eventually tackled by another fear-stricken individual, leaving Owens' gunsight unobstructed. Owens would then struggle with another affected individual before the chaos at the diner ended. Scarecrow later revealed that the resulting chaos in the diner had used only five ounces of his latest Fear Toxin in his warning to Gotham City when he took credit for the attack.
During Scarecrow's attack on Gotham the following night, Owens was placed inside a cell, and still suffered from the effects of the toxin. As the night progressed, Owens eventually regained his sanity, was allowed to leave his cell, and spent the rest of the night in solitude at his desk near the elevator in the main room of the GCPD Lockup.
Trivia
- In the game's novelization, his first name is given as Scott. The validity of this is in question though, as the novel alters the name of both his wife and the waitress.
- The player can choose to shoot or not shoot the people at the diner while under the influence of the Fear Toxin. This changes the dialogue between the GCPD cops regarding Owens. If the former, they comment that the incident would most likely result in Owen's badge being revoked, despite the fact that the situation wasn't actually his fault, though he blames himself. If the latter, the GCPD officers instead are impressed that he didn't shoot anyone despite being infected with a highly-concentrated dose of Fear Toxin. There is also a 3rd option: if you shoot but don't hit anyone, the GCPD Officers will say he was lucky he didn't hit anyone.
- The novelization has Owens pull out his gun during the Scarecrow gas sequence, but then drop it before he can use it, thereby removing him from any culpability in the ensuing chaos.
- Owens is married, and apparently was put on a diet by his wife. This may be why he changes his initial order from a chicken salad to waffles and bacon and tells the waitress to not tell his wife about the order during the opening scene.
- Owen's wife is named Ellen in the game, while the novelization refers to her as Donna. The novelization also references his wife being over five months pregnant at the time.
- Owens was seen later at his desk. When interacted with, he was in disbelief that he took a life (if he shot one or more people) and wondered if he could look at his wife and kids like before. If he didn’t shoot, however, he would instead compare the toxin’s residual effects to a really bad hangover, as well as grumble about likely being under psych evaluation for some time.
- Owens is the only confirmed surviving victim of the attack on Pauli's Diner; both the waitress and Bearded Man are confirmed to be dead as of the Shadow War DLC, and the fates of the unnamed customers are never revealed. However, there are multiple other corpses of people in the morgue which could mean that other customers were killed in the diner.
- If you were to mod the opening scene in Pauli's Diner to play in third person it would show only his arms.
- Keystone City, where Owens comes from, is the city of the DC superhero Jay Garrick, the first Flash.