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."
Thank you for the info. Where are the reverends of the Church of the Perpetually Offended?
If these are the facts of the case, what possible crime has been committed here?
If these are the facts of the case, what possible crime has been committed here?
Why are there so many hold ups with these thug kids? Who is telling them that people are easy prey, it will be a breeze to point this unregistered, stolen gun and they will readily surrender all they have. It the victims get out of line, just shoot them. But don’t forget to rape the 90 year old disabled wife first, of course.
End their lives, destroy their families, all for a few bucks that you didn’t earn. But you don’t have to earn it. Simply take it from people who have worked their whole lives for the few items they have on them and you are free to go home to a family who thinks the sun rises and shines in your ass.
Well guess what, it is over. Witness nature. God’s creatures are ever evolving to defend themselves against new predators and these predators look like they could be- well, someone else’s sons.
Truth hurts. Your precious snowflake was a thug who didn't respect life or property. For some reason, he felt he had a right to take something that didn't belong to him. He got what he deserved.
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True. And if his parents had married - and stayed married - to each other giving Little Tez a normal upbringing; would he still be alive?
I wonder where I can go and easily find statistics showing death rates of black youths from broken single parent homes verses black youths from traditional two parent families?
Yeah, situational awareness is a skill many do not have because they've never practiced it. This guy obviously had it. When you observe a young black male pull his shirt over his face and head in your direction, that's a good indication to assume that things are going to quickly go south and right now would be a great time to prepare yourself. The kid died with a loaded and cocked weapon in his hands so things certainly could have turned out very bad for his poorly-chosen target.
And the article said he lived with his "parents," but no comment from Ja'Quares's father?
Don’t be surprised if he gets Zimmeremaned.
So Ja'Quares was exactly like Trayvon, and Trayvon exactly like Ja'Quares.
I feel for the mother’s grief too. And what makes it harder to raise kids these days is the aggressively secular ambient culture which drives biblical morality from public consciousness. It is evil days for our land.
I noticed that yesterday, so someone’s got it wrong. We have a daughter who turns 14 next month, and she was born in 1998. Then again, I’m doing that racist white math, so my number may be politically incorrect.
I think carjacking at gunpoint is probably reserved for bad people.
The sticky part will be proving that the other folks “commit[ted] or attempt[ed] to commit” the crime of robbery. If there’s a “joint enterprise” instruction available in Alabama, it might work, but I don’t know that “mere” conspiracy to commit robbery would get them there. Driving the getaway car would be an act in furtherance of the conspiracy, and might also qualify them as “participants” in the robbery.
Your thoughts?
I always assume every car I pass has at least one functioning, loaded gun in it.
Ja’Quares? How do people come up with names like this?
Well put, ma’am.
The media is already stirring and agaitating.
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