Posted on 05/03/2012 7:30:57 AM PDT by JustaDumbBlonde
The mother of a 13-year-old boy fatally shot when police say he tried to rob a couple said she is in shock that her son is dead -- and even more so at the circumstances surrounding his death.
"I don't want it put out like he was a bad person or a mean person, because he wasn't," Latonya Walker, 38, said Tuesday. "This is not him, not who he was. Anybody that knew Ja'Quares knows that."
Birmingham police said Ja'Quares Cortez Walker was in a car that pulled into the parking lot of the gated Skyview Condominiums at 407 Skyview Drive shortly after 11 p.m. Friday. The condo is off Robert Jemison Drive in southwest Birmingham.
Wearing a gray shirt around his face like a bandana and armed with a loaded and cocked pistol, authorities said Ja'Quares approached a black Lexus SUV with a couple inside and ordered the driver out. The driver pulled a gun and shot Ja'Quares multiple times.
The driver's name has not been released.
Police officials on Tuesday said the case remains under investigation. Once their probe is complete, they will present their findings to the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office to determine whether charges will be filed.
District Attorney Brandon Falls said he has been told that police will present the case to him no later than Thursday.
Police released no information on the Friday incident until late Monday, until then saying only that an "unclassified shooting death" had occurred.
Police Chief A.C. Roper on Tuesday said police are still investigating.
"We questioned all the people we needed to question in relation to the incident," he said.
Police still are looking for the people who were accompanying Ja'Quares on Friday night, "but no one has been arrested," said Sgt. Johnny Williams Jr., spokesman for the Birmingham Police Department.
The shooter, Williams said, talked to investigators at the scene, and he voluntarily went to the Birmingham Police headquarters.
Latonya Walker said her son, who school officials confirmed was the quarterback on the football team at Martha Gaskins Middle School, was home about 9 p.m. Friday. She said he was visiting with two of his friends and one of his brothers in the front yard of the east Birmingham home where Ja'Quares lived with his parents, two brothers and a sister.
A red Chevrolet Trail Blazer pulled up to the group of young men. Latonya Walker said she yelled out to her son and asked who was in the car. He replied that it was one of his friends and the friend's uncle, and then got in the vehicle with them.
"Mom, we're just going to the store, and we'll be right back," his mother recalled him saying. It wasn't long, she said, before she began to worry. She said she called everyone she could think of, but had no success finding her son. She said he did not have a cellphone.
"It's not like him to go anywhere and not tell me," she said.
After several hours, Latonya Walker said she called Birmingham police and reported her son missing. She said she paced the house throughout the night, and still no word came.
"It was a real rough day," she said. "I knew something wasn't right."
It wasn't until about 3:30 p.m. Saturday, she said, that a Birmingham police detective called her and asked her if she had reported her son missing.
When she said yes, he asked her to meet him and look at a photo of a youth shot to death the previous night.
Police have said they were not able to identify Ja'Quares until Saturday.
Latonya Walker said the account of her son's death doesn't make sense to her. "He got fussed at like all kids do, but he was a real respectful child," she said. "Every day was a happy day for us."
She said she just wants to know the truth.
"Even if he did this, someone had to put him up to it. Why else would 16- and 17-year-olds want to hang out with a 13-year-old boy?" she said. "It's not the way he was raised."
She said her heart is heavy, and she's still not sure everything has hit her yet.
"It's like he's still here, and I feel him holding me up," she said. "All I can do is pray, and know God was ready to take his angel."
I just took a look at the C-Level executive row. Not one single Ja'Quares on it.
Lots of Bobs and Jims and Marys and Helens though. Both bathrooms, all colors and flavors, so I don't think that it's a discrimination thing. :-)
Much like Trayon Martin’s parents, when I watch this woman on video I don’t detect even the slightest trace of GRIEF over her son’s death.
She tries to blame others, deny the nature of her son, who was clearly deeply into gang culture, and has that same misguided determination to seek “the truth” and “justice”, but no GRIEF.
I’m not sure if Walker and Martin’s parents never really loved their sons or if deep down they realize that their sons were growing up to be thugs and therefore took the news with a sense of resignation and even relief, but for whatever reason, they don’t display any grief or even sadness over the deaths.
My take is that Luh Tez G is a friend and that’s his page. Is ‘Luh Tez’ ebonic phonics for ‘looters?’ As in ‘lootahs?’ At any rate his friends make no bones about living the thug life.
And don’t forget La-a (The dash ain’t silent!)
The dead thug’s nickname was “Tez” or “Little Tez” short for his middle name “Cortez”. From the various slang dictionaries I have checked, “Luh” can mean love or little. In this case, I would guess it means, “little”.
A lot of kids lie to get Facebook accounts. By the rules the kid has to be 13.
I'm sorry for your loss but, so what, lady? If you stick a gun in my face I don't care how old you are, what color you are, what sex you are, what your sexual preference is or what your favorite food is. I don't care if you're the founder of the local conservatives club or a veteran with a chest full of medals. You're dead!
"I'm going to keep asking and I want to know what happened, the truth, however long it takes. I'm not giving up till I find out the truth," Walker said.
Take two minutes out of your life and go look at his Facebook page. Now that he's dead. If that's cold then so be it. You're the one who couldn't be bothered to see what he was doing when he was alive.
Thanks...
Did you see the photo of the inmate on the phone talking with someone on the other side of the glass? OMG!
I’ve read facebook pages of both blacks and whites after reading about their crimes. I’m angry at the kind of life these people choose, but also sad for them.
What’s the answer?
OK. It’s all confusing to me.
“That doesn’t make it any less sad for the family...
Or for the city in matter of fact—
This young man had a lot going for him.... still in school, etc.”
I agree. Sometimes children just do really, really stupid things. Even fatal things. No matter how well they may or may not have been raised. In my high school, children a bit older than this kid would die in cars wrapped around trees because the driver had been huffing cleaning fluid and/or just driving way too damn fast. And we had one or two killed with gunfire. And these were all upper-middle-class kids. Probably some who even had decent parents who tried. Parents who also had other children who turned out just fine.
If anything, I blame the culture of violence fostered by TV, movies, games, and music, with a major chunk of this culture of violence being a subculture specially tinted black. This 13 year old basically probably couldn’t distinguish fiction from reality and no doubt had no idea at all what mortality really meant. My guess is that he was weak-willed, mislead, and succumbed to pressure from much older, truly bad people to “prove” that he was one of the “cool” people. Quite frankly, there’s much more to what this kid did than possibly less-than-perfect parenting.
Chances are the driver was black too; more crime is black-on-black than black-on-white.
Coulter and Jackson are right, all law-abiding black men in this country should be armed and trained and carry. Oh, sisters too.
Ja’Quares dad had no comment having been shot during a holdup when 19 years old
No, I didn't see that one.
Click through the photos...
“Mom, we’re just going to the store, and we’ll be right back,”
Just going to get some Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea mom.
That's all I get at that link.
How about “Asunder” and “Deleterious”?
Great find!
According to that he was NOT thirteen he was six weeks or so away from fifteen!
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