Church, family say they tried to help shooting suspect
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/07/28/driving-park-church-service.html
One of the two South Side residents charged with murder in a string of shootings last week had been in a juvenile lockup for three years, being released in late May only because he had turned 18, a mentor from his neighborhood said yesterday.
Members of the Family Missionary Baptist Church on the South Side didn’t know Nathaniel Brunner well, not having seen him while he was in state custody, said Benjamin Price, 55, who mentors troubled youth at the church.
Price didn’t know what crime Brunner committed as a juvenile, but he knows it must have been serious, given the length of the sentence.
Members were better-acquainted with Brunner’s alleged partner in crime, Devonere Simmonds, 17, who often visited the church through the years. At a service yesterday morning, church mentors and Simmonds’ older sister said they wish they had spent more time trying to get the boy’s life on track.
“We tried to work with them and reason with them, but you can’t make a person do anything,” Price said. “The pull to the streets was too great for them. We tried, and they just didn’t want to let go of the streets.
“I wish I would have spent more time with them and reaching out to them because I could see they were trouble. But I could never get hold of them, and that’s what hurt me more than anything else. I just didn’t take the time to do the things that were necessary.”
Simmonds’ mother, grandmother, brothers and sisters attended yesterday’s service. The Rev. Frederick LaMarr said the congregation shared their grief.
Simmonds is the middle child of seven and the oldest son, church members said.
LaMarr said he hadn’t seen Brunner in seven years, since he was 11 years old.
The two were the subject of a manhunt that ended Saturday in Dayton when police found them sleeping in a stolen car that had been taken from a Virginia man who was shot in the head at a truck stop at Rt. 42 and I-70. The victim, William Joseph Rudd, 39, was pumping gas when he was shot at 4:50 a.m. Saturday.
He was listed in serious condition yesterday in OhioHealth Grant Medical Center, an upgrade from Saturday, when police said he had been admitted in critical condition.
Rudd had attended a high-school reunion in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and was headed back to Virginia, where he works in laser technology, said Pat Rudd, who is married to Rudd’s first cousin, Craig Rudd of Drakesville, Iowa.
Rudd is the sole parent of a young son. The boy had been staying with Rudd’s parents in Cedar Rapids, but they all have come to Columbus since learning of the shooting, Pat Rudd said.
Family members wonder why a State Highway Patrol trooper picked up Simmonds and Brunner on the road early Saturday and dropped them off at the truck stop.
“Why did the cop pick up these two boys and let them go and never search them?” Pat Rudd said.
Patrol Sgt. Jeff Shane has been placed on paid leave while his handling of the case is investigated.
Before Rudd’s shooting, Lamont Frazier, 17, who was Simmonds’ friend, was shot and killed Thursday. That killing happened just blocks from the Convenient Plus Food Mart on E. Livingston Avenue where, on Wednesday, clerk Imran Ashgar was shot and killed. Police have charged Simmonds and Brunner with murder in Ashgar’s killing; they say a surveillance camera captured Simmonds holding a gun over the clerk.
On July 21, two other people were shot, one fatally, outside a vacant house at 777 Lilley Ave. Police say Quinten Ellis-John Prater was killed and James E. Norvet III was critically wounded.
The Columbus police homicide squad provided no further information on the two suspects yesterday afternoon. They were not yet in the Franklin County jail.
No one at the church condones the crimes, and there no doubt will be a price to pay, LaMarr said. But his church believes not in judging others, but in redemption, he said.
“With that, we’re glad that they have found them,” LaMarr said.
“I tried to reach out to him, but I’m always working, so I haven’t,” said Simmonds’ oldest sister, Martika Mahone, 23, a cashier at the Hollywood Casino Columbus.
Surrounded by family, Simmonds’ mother, Maya Foster, stood and swayed yesterday as the church sang, Let go and let God have his way.
“We have God in our hearts every day, not just today,” Foster said as she left the service, adding that she had no news of her son and assumed he was still in jail in Dayton.
Devonere Simmonds, left, and Nathaniel Brunner
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