Searching for answers, waiting for justice

One night every month a flood of crippling feelings washes over Sally Rowsey. As sure as clockwork, they come.

It's the uneasiness that first wakes her just before midnight. Her tossing and turning stirs her husband who reaches out for her in the dark. She manages to fall back to sleep a few more hours.

Then comes 3 a.m.  That was the time the ringing of her home phone woke Rowsey. Her father told her that her only child, 19-year-old Colton Cavazos, was hurt and she needed to get to the downtown hospital.

The 14th of every month since November she relives the drive from the Flour Bluff home she shares with her husband. She remembers where her husband pulled his truck over on Yorktown Boulevard and told her no matter how fast he drove, it wouldn’t matter.

Her son was dead.

Rowsey envisions her son lying wrapped in white cloth on the hospital table. His face was so beautiful. He’d just gotten a haircut. She went to hold him but hospital staff held her back.

“You can’t touch him. He’s part of a murder investigation,” they said.

Some of her memory from the hospital is blurred. She learned he’d been shot in the parking lot outside his apartment. His friend put pressure on the gunshot wound to try in vain to stop the bleeding. So many people were there until the gunshots were fired. The shooter drove away. A neighbor’s security camera caught the whole incident.

Rowsey expected her son’s killer to be behind bars that same Monday morning. No one was arrested that day or the next. By the end of the week, Corpus Christi police still had no suspect.

Rowsey’s grief was compounded with a newfound purpose: To bring her son’s killer to justice.

“I will live however long I can to see that someone is held accountable,” Rowsey said.

Nine homicides in Corpus Christi spanning  the past five years remain unsolved. That’s potentially nine killers on the loose. Most of those unsolved cases are from 2016 including the shooting of Cavazos. The police department's clearance rate in homicide case has historically been around 90 percent.

The Caller-Times interviewed a few of the homicide victims' families and police on the eve of National Crime Victims' Rights Week, which begins Sunday.

Families of those killed last year are just beginning a pursuit for justice.  There's no guarantee they’ll ever find the answers they’re looking for.

Donna Watkins, founder of the local Homicide Survivors Support Group, has gone to funerals of parents and spouses who died without knowing who killed their loved ones.

Holding out hope

Detectives warn these families they may wait a month, a year, maybe longer. Police tell the families someone, somewhere knows something. And when that person who knows something is arrested for an unrelated crime, they may talk in hopes of wagering a deal.

It happened in the case of Breanna Wood, a 21-year-old woman who was missing four months before a Nueces County Jail inmate led authorities to her body in January. Her remains were stuffed in a cardboard box and left in a grassy area near an abandoned home outside city limits. The inmate said Joseph Tejeda ordered him to dispose of her. Another inmate told authorities Tejeda admitted to the crime, according to police reports. Tejeda is awaiting trial.

The grandparents of 13-year-old Alex Torres waited nearly two years for someone to admit to police they knew who the killer was last year.  He was shot on his grandparents’ doorstep when he answered the door. Police said the shooter was looking for someone else. David Davila is charged with the killing, along with his former girlfriend, Christina Trevino, who is accused of driving the getaway car.

Families hang their hopes on stories like those.

Colton Cavazos’ mom and dad, Christopher Cavazos, remain faithful.

For others, like the family of Nathaniel Gutierrez, trust in the system has started to unravel.

More than two years have passed since the 29-year-old was shot on Dec. 19, 2014, in a car in the middle of the afternoon near Carroll High School.

Police found bullet casings about a block away. Nearby, police pulled over the driver of a silver Cadillac riddled with bullet holes. Several witnesses were questioned, but no arrests were made.

Jeremy Flores and his mother still don't understand why Nathaniel’s killer hasn't been found. Police told the family his killing was drug related. That came as no surprise to Flores.

Gutierrez was on probation and had been dealing drugs.

Flores had gotten a job and wanted to better his life and urged his older brother to do the same.

But Flores felt Gutierrez was addicted to the streets. Not long before Gutierrez’s death, Flores had stopped speaking to his brother in an effort to distance himself from his old lifestyle.

Flores, too, knows his brother's killer is out there.

"In my head and in my heart I know I could figure out who did this," Flores said. "It kills me to not know and also to know that other people out there know what happened."

There was not enough evidence for police to present Gutierrez's case to the Nueces County District Attorney's Office, said Police Lt. Mark Tuley of the robbery and homicide unit.

Surveillance video footage was obtained from a convenience store in the area but Tuley said footage only showed images of before and after the shooting. Gutierrez’s case went cold in 2016 due to lack of leads or suspects, Tuley said.

Flores struggles to believe every effort has been made.

"I definitely feel the system has failed my family," he said. "The streets know what happened."

Tuley said there's a strong desire from homicide detectives to help the victims' families.

"The detectives think about those cases daily," Tuley said. "(The detectives) discuss (the cases) with each other, they go over them and go over every single lead they might have, making sure they’re doing everything they could possibly do to solve that case."

Struggling to cope

Flores has channeled his frustration and grief into art and caring for his brother's three children, Nathan, 8; Leah, 3; and Lincoln, 6.

Flores, an entrepreneur and internationally recognized spray paint muralist, honors his brother with his work. Gutierrez’s name can sometimes be spotted in Flores’ pieces. It’s a nod to a dream the brothers once shared of owning their own businesses.

Some who've lost loved ones are like Flores and able to pour their emotions into a cause.

Watkins, motivated by her brother’s killing, started the Homicide Survivors Support Group in 1993 to help families with whom she can relate. Her brother’s 1972 death in Tennessee went unsolved about a year. Police made arrests but the suspects were acquitted at trial.

Watkins has worked with about two dozen families of unsolved killings. For some, the loss and the questions have immobilized them. Watkins has known people who’ve quit their jobs, lost their homes and filed for bankruptcy.

“The longer that there are no clues coming in, it just compounds the grief,” Watkins said. “It literally is a hole in the heart that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It will consume a person’s heart.”

Christopher Cavazos could have been consumed with speculation and theorizing on social media. For a week after Colton’s death, Christopher Cavazos traced mentions of his son. It led him down Internet trails to nowhere. For a while, he admits, he thought of seeking revenge. But who he’d seek revenge on, he doesn’t have a clue.

“I think any parent would want something done,” Cavazos said.

Cavazos put away social media. Now, sometimes, Cavazos said he thinks a worse punishment for the killer would be to be arrested years later when the person is in another stage of life. Cavazos said he’s imagined the killer starting a family and being yanked from their lives. So many of his thoughts include one word: “maybe.” Because there is nothing Cavazos knows about his son’s killer.

“Sometimes I think, on the other hand, maybe if they do catch them 10 years down the road that might be a good thing. When they’re getting their life together, maybe, if they ever do. Maybe they’re newly married and have a kid and now they just got arrested. Now they’re going to prison for the rest of their life,” Cavazos said. “That’s a back-and-forth thing for me.”

Watkins said those feelings are normal. Grief is often replaced with anger that the person responsible is free while they have to visit their loved one at a grave or speak to an urn.

“The pain is even more intense (than a solved killing) because the first thing you think about in the morning is ‘This person’s out there … And it actually makes the grieving process come to a complete halt,’” Watkins said.

And anger is often a feeling Sheila Fuqua has to shake off to be able to go on.

It has only been two months since her only son, 25-year-old Andre Fuqua, was shot and killed while driving home on Interstate 37 from a trail race near Houston in January.

Andre Fuqua was an avid runner and an adventure seeker. He was a student at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and lived at home.

There have not been any arrests in the case.

Sheila Fuqua is able cope on some days better than others.

Sometimes she'll stand by her son's bedroom door and break down. She's still waiting to hear from him. Every day she waits for him to come home, she said.

"I try to get out of the house and go somewhere because I get so angry," Fuqua said. "They say as time goes on it gets easier but it hasn't gotten easier. We go on because we have to go on."

She said finding the person who killed her son would bring some closure for her and her husband, Gregg Fuqua. But she does not know if she'd be able to forgive, she said.

"The person or persons who did this, they are cowards," Sheila Fuqua said. "How do they go on? How do they go forward and live their lives knowing what they have done to me? To my family and to Andre's friends?"

Gregg Fuqua emails and calls the detectives assigned to his son's case as often as he can. This week the lead detective told him the case is officially cold. That gives Gregg Fuqua little hope that they'll find the killer. But he hasn't given up.

Gregg Fuqua is planning on increasing the monetary reward for anyone who comes forward with information that leads to an arrest. He has also written a letter to Governor Greg Abbott seeking help.

"The hurt goes and we'd like to have closure," Gregg Fuqua said. "It's being reiterated to me that's still working on it and my only question is where can we go from here? We have to go out on our own."

The Fuquas join — as Rowsey coined it — a club no parent wants to be part of.

They are parents who believe they won’t give up in the pursuit of finding their child’s killer. Like Andre’s parents, Rowsey calls the detective on Colton’s case every couple of weeks.

Cavazos, Colton’s father, also is going through channels to increase the reward.

Their advantage is that the case is still “very active,” Tuley said.

Police have sent video surveillance footage of the shooter’s getaway car to the FBI in hopes the agency’s technology can enhance the images.

For now, Colton’s parents linger in a waiting game. They believe eventually the killer will be arrested.

“I do. I think it’s not going to be the way I would like it to be… I’d like it to be quickly and for someone to say, ‘Hey, this is who did it,’” Rowsey said. “In God’s time. I’ll wait for that day.”

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Man, 19, shot on city's Southside dies

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'We feel helpless': Fuqua's parents seek answers

CCPD seek public's help in local runner's shooting

Local artist seeks to share positive message through art

How to get help

Corpus Christi Police Department Victims Assistance Program offers criminal justice support and advocacy, crisis counseling, and assistance with crime victims' compensation claims. 

Information: 361-886-2840

Got a tip?

If you have information about these unsolved homicides call Crime Stoppers at 888-TIPS (8477) or visit www.888TIPS.com.

IF YOU GO

National Crime Victims Rights Week Events

Monday

• 10 a.m. Wreath Display Ceremony at Nueces County Courthouse

Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez will speak at the kick-off event. Wreaths will be on display from various agencies, including the Homicide Survivors Support Group that adorns wreaths with pictures of homicide victims. A resource table will be on display from 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Tuesday

• Drive with Lights on to Support Crime Victims

Wednesday

• 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. Resource Fair at Del Mar College East Campus Harvin Center
• 7 p.m. Memorial Vigil for LGBT Community Homicides, Metropolitan Community Church, 501 S. Staples St.

Ask the Experts Live on KIIITV3

• Experts will be on call from the following agencies: Nueces County District Attorney’s Office, Corpus Christi Police Department, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Nueces County Attorney’s Office, Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Women’s Shelter of South Texas, Nueces County Juvenile Justice Center, Adult Protective Services, Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
• 7 p.m. Memorial Vigil for LGBT Community for Homicides

Thursday

• 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. Victims’ Services Recognition Ceremony at Del Mar College East Campus La Retama Room