 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
Back
|
Robber felt 'betrayed' by police
By AMY HERDY and CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD
© St. Petersburg Times, TAMPA -- Nester DeJesus never forgave the police. At 19, a felony arrest for assaulting an ex-girlfriend scuttled his dream of joining the Marines. The charges were dropped, but the arrest stayed on his record.
"After that (arrest), he hated police," said his sister, Maria DeJesus. "He felt betrayed by them." Unemployed, living with his mother and behind on the $450 monthly payments for his Nissan Xterra, DeJesus and his girlfriend, Paula Gutierrez, robbed a bank at gunpoint July 6, police said. During the pursuit that followed, DeJesus, 25, shot to death Tampa police Officer Lois Marrero before taking a hostage and killing himself during a three-hour standoff with police. Gutierrez, 24, surrendered and remains in jail without bail on first-degree murder, armed robbery and armed kidnapping charges. DeJesus' mother, Lisa Santiago, 38, does maintenance work at the Crossings apartment complex where she lived with her son, Gutierrez and their 2-year-old daughter. Inside the apartment, strewn with boxes and suitcases, she talked Thursday about her son's tragic life and the anger that consumed him. Her 22-year-old daughter sometimes joined in, adding childhood memories of her older brother.
They all wept quietly. Growing up on welfare in Brooklyn, Nester "Chino" DeJesus Jr. knew poverty, his sister said. His parents separated when he was a toddler, and his father struggled with drug addiction before dying of AIDS in 1988 when Nester was 12. His father's death, and its circumstances, devastated the youth. "(His father) was his idol until he found out how he died," his mother said. When he became a father with Gutierrez, DeJesus cried tears of joy. He became certified as an air-conditioning repairman, and he and Gutierrez moved to Florida with their daughter for a better life in 1999. His mother said his devotion to his Gutierrez was evident in the final act of his life. Surrounded by police, Gutierrez and DeJesus had plans to each commit suicide on the count of 3. Instead, DeJesus shot himself at 2, his mother said, leaving a devastated Gutierrez too shocked to react. "That froze her right there," his mother said. She walked out of the apartment and into police custody. It is Gutierrez's involvement in DeJesus' crimes that has both families stunned. They described Gutierrez as a shy woman and devoted mother. "She is very delicate," Santiago said, "like a piece of glass." Yet police accuse her of participating in two armed robberies, and of taking Officer Marrero's gun as she lay dying in the apartment complex parking lot. "I would expect that from my son, because he was angry at the world. But her? No way," she said. Gutierrez's mother, Melba Gutierrez, said her daughter is very close to her family and would call their home in Queens several times a day from Florida. Yet in the last few weeks, Mrs. Gutierrez said, the phone calls stopped, and she knew something was wrong. "Paula was very dedicated to Ashley," Mrs. Gutierrez said. "She is loving, sweet and tender. That's why we can't imagine her doing what she did." DeJesus and Gutierrez met in 1993 in Greenwich Village in New York. In November 1998, after eight months of classes in refrigerator and air-conditioning repair in Manhattan, DeJesus went to work for an appliance repair service in College Point, Queens. His boss, Cathy Donnelly, sympathized with the plight of the unwed couple with a baby. She took a chance on them, putting up the first month's rent and security deposit so they could get an apartment in College Point. "He seemed like a nice man," Donnelly said. "He was working hard here. He wanted to get his own place. I gave him a loan so he could get his own place." For about six months, DeJesus worked as a dispatcher, sending workers to repair jobs. He was eager to get out of the office and do repairs. One day in May 1999, Donnelly said, Gutierrez called her to say DeJesus wouldn't be at work that day. When Donnelly asked for details, Gutierrez said he had been arrested for shoplifting. "I said, "Is there a history of that?' She said, "Yeah,' " Donnelly recalled. "I told Paula, "I hope you understand I can't have him working here.' " Soon after, Donnelly recalled, DeJesus returned to her office. He wasn't there to beg for his job back. "Thank you for everything you tried to do to help me," he told Donnelly. "I'm sorry I screwed up." Donnelly added: "He didn't have to come to my office." It was several months after losing his job that DeJesus brought his family to Tampa, where his mother had moved. "(Paula) was very sad to be leaving her family because they were still in New York," said Laurie Kozicki, a former landlord in Queens. "He was basically going to Florida because his family was there, and to better his little family." In New York, DeJesus' record shows a history of petty crimes from November 1993 to May 1999, including charges of graffiti, fighting in public, shoplifting from Macy's and trying to beat a subway fare. In Florida, the family struggled to make ends meet on the $13-an-hour job DeJesus found repairing air conditioners. Gutierrez did not work, and the couple preferred it that way, their families said, so she could stay at home with Ashley. Money was tight, and pressures mounted. In February, DeJesus stormed into the Allied Tire and Service Center on N Dale Mabry Highway and began yelling at employees, witnesses said. He demanded that they mount the tires on his car, but before they could run his credit card through the machine, he snatched the card away. Then, he grabbed an employee's hand and scratched it so hard the hand bled. Employee Scott Roberts said he had no idea what set DeJesus off. The State Attorney's Office filed misdemeanor battery charges against DeJesus in March, but he didn't show up for a court appearance in April. The judge issued a notice for his arrest. About six weeks ago, DeJesus quit his job over an argument with his boss. He became ashamed of being unemployed, his family said. "It bothered him that I paid for everything," his mother said, including the Xterra she bought him for Christmas in 1999, under the agreement he keep up the payments. She struggled to explain the final actions of her son, who finally "cracked," she said. "He was a beautiful person who would do anything for you, but don't pull his trigger," she said. "When you do, (his temper) blows up." There was a brighter side to DeJesus' life, who dropped out of high school but later earned his GED. He was a loyal brother and doting father, his sister said, who kept every card and letter he received and tried to hide his sentimental side behind a tough exterior. And he adored his daughter Ashley, now 2. She will return with Gutierrez's family to New York. "She was his world," his sister said, and DeJesus was the type of doting father who would fill up a kiddie pool in the middle of the living room when the weather was too poor to play outside. During the hostage negotiations Friday, as he talked for the last time with his mother on the phone, DeJesus told her he was sorry for what she would go through, and that he did not mean to kill the police officer. His family had his remains cremated, and keep them in a black glass urn placed next to his photo. "I'd rather have my brother free than locked up in a cage and miserable for the rest of his life," Maria DeJesus said. "Now he's with my father -- he's at peace."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
Headlines From the Times local news desks |
