This was another case of a bully bullying the wrong person who decided to stop him, permanently.
Aimee Hodges is the manager of a convenience store five blocks from Sierra High School in Southeastern Colorado Springs. The high school crowd makes up a large portion of her business from 3 to 8 pm. On Nov 9, 1995, a blue car pulls into the parking lot, two black males jump out and rush into the store yelling “call the police”. Then there are gunshots outside, so she ducks and calls 911. After the shooting stops, the two boys run outside to the car and pull out a bleeding kid, 14 yo JL Jackson. He’s been shot in the back of the head. They lay him across the hood of their car and wait for an ambulance.
JL dies in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. But his sister Julie is there when police arrive and she is somewhat of a thug. She sees a Hispanic guy pull into the parking lot. It’s his usual stop, getting coffee after work. Julie points at him and yells that he’s the one who shot her brother. Immediately the three black teens are beating up this poor Hispanic guy who has no idea what just happened.
Police stop the bullies from beating up the innocent Hispanic guy and put him in a cop car. They question him. He comes there every day at the same time and just left work less than five minutes ago. Police confirm and let George Rodriguez go. But there’s a pattern of behavior that police are seeing–bullying. These teenagers are violent bullies, including JL’s sister Julie. So he’s not so innocent.
Julie tells Lt Joe Kenda that the leader of JL’s group is 16 yo Moses Cooley who has a criminal record. He was driving the car. Julie also lies and tells Kenda that JL, Moses, and their group were being threatened at school today. Not true. Moses and JL had actually been bullying this Samoan kid for weeks and today they’d told him they were going to kill him. But police will find that out rather quickly. JL and his group are the bullies, not the victims in that fight.
Police find 13 9mm parabellum casings scattered along the five blocks to the school, so the shooter was on them pretty quickly and kept shooting. They also learn that after the boys got out of the car and went inside, the shooter did not stop shooting. So he meant to kill all of them.
Police are stonewalled by almost all of the teenagers they speak to. Julie is telling them nothing but lies. And JL’s parents are under the illusion that he’s a nice kid. Then they speak to Corey Willis, whose father makes him talk. Corey reluctantly tells police that he happened to be in the car behind Moses as they were leaving school. Then a white car saw Moses, did a U-turn and cut Corey off, and tailed Moses’s car. That car was being driven by 21 yo Gene Tuiletufuga, the older brother of Mathew, the Samoan kid Moses and JL had been relentlessly bullying for weeks. Gene had a machine gun hanging out of the window in his left hand and was pointing it at Moses’ car and shooting the entire way to the convenience store. That day at lunch, Moses, JL, and their group had started in their usual “fat kid” bullying of Mathew Tuiletufuga. But today they repeatedly threatened to shoot him after school and they made it believable.
Police arrest Eugene Tuiletufuga, but he won’t talk. They search his house, but there is no gun. So they ask Gene’s girlfriend Zermah. She can be charged as an accessory after the fact if she doesn’t give up the gun, so she takes them to her uncle’s and shows them the gun in a plastic tote under some clothes.
At the police station, Gene’s mother Gwen comes in and makes him talk. He tells them about the relentless bullying of his brother and that today they told him he was dead, they were going to kill him after school, shoot him dead. So Mathew called Gene crying. Gene came to school to take care of it. Their family had moved to Colorado Springs from Los Angeles where gangs kill kids daily, so they were terrified that Moses, JL, and their gang were actually going to kill Mathew. After the weeks of bullying, it was believable. And although the police seem to think Colorado Springs is “safe”, it’s really not. Look at what these bullies did.
Gene accepts a plea deal and is sentenced to 45 years.
In the Samoan culture, family is everything.
Unfortunately, Moses Cooley and Julie Jackson aren’t arrested for lying to police, falsely accusing an innocent man of murder, beating up that innocent man, or bullying.
Bibliography
Homicide Hunter, Season 2 Episode 7 Primal Fear, air date: Nov 26, 2012.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.