The first day of fall brought a cool breeze and bright sunshine. Dappled patterns of sunlight scattered across the ground and porch at 703 10th Street. Sounds of songbirds filled the air. But Crystal Gibbs couldn’t enjoy the autumn. Her life has been filled with horror since Sunday night when she felt her love take his last breath as she tried to stop the bleeding from a stab wound.
Gibbs had been with 30-year-old Jamey Myers for eight years. They had lived for four years at the house in the Old Orange Historic District. She can’t understand is how Jamey’s step-father, the man who reared him, could kill him?
Gibbs has a hard time talking. She sits on the front porch steps. Her chest bends over to touch her knees. She rocks and rocks, slowly. Tears run down her cheeks when she talks. Sometimes sobs make her shake.
Her 15-year-old son is getting counseling at school. He saw the stabbing between the man he knew as a father and a man who was like a grandfather. “He can’t sleep. He has nightmares,” Gibbs said. He keeps walking the two blocks to St. Mary Catholic Church to pray and then returns home.
Gibbs manages to smile when she talks about Jamey. They enjoyed going to the beach. “He liked to surf fish for sharks. He liked to play Frisbee. His hobby was metal detecting,” she said. Jamey had worked as a roofer and at the plants.
They had taken a break from their relationship but were ready to get back together. Her kindness, in a round-about way, led to his death. The man who stabbed him had been homeless and living in his truck, Gibbs said. She let him stay in one of the rooms at the house. Biologically, the man was Jamey’s step-father. Jamey never knew his biological father, she said. His step-father was the biological father to Jamey’s brothers. “All I knew, it was Jamey’s dad,” Gibbs said.
On Sunday, Gibbs and her teenage son took advantage of the sunny, warm day and went to Galveston. She and Jamey had been talking on the phone and he was going to spend that night with her.
Orange police reported the call to the house came a few minutes before 9 p.m. Gibbs said she took a shower after arriving back home and was in the front part of the house. Her son, along with Jamey and his step-father were in the backyard.
A neighbor reported hearing an argument coming from outside. Gibbs said she couldn’t hear an argument from inside the front bedroom. “I don’t know what happened.”
She heard her son holler, though. “I ran toward the outside,” she said. Her son was running to her. They collided in the kitchen and fell down.
“When I got outside, Jamey was on the ground and there was nothing I could do,” she said. He was bleeding profusely. She used her hands to try to stop the blood. Jamey stopped breathing. She yelled for help to neighbors.
Orange police reported that the fire department and Acadian Ambulance tried to revive Jamey. He was pronounced dead at the Baptist Emergency Room.
Police did not arrest the step-father, but will give the case to the district attorney for presentation to a grand jury.
Jamey’s mother, Dana Kaderli, said “It’s hard to believe it’s the man he called ‘Dad’ for 28 years” killed her son. Jamey was 2-years-old when she married the man. She said she had seen him pull a knife on Jamey before. “It almost makes me think it was planned. He knew Jamey was coming back,” she said. The man could be violent, according to Kadeli, and she left him after he kicked her in the head.
Gibbs doesn’t know where the man is now and she doesn’t care. She can’t eat and though she can’t sleep, she finds it hard to get out of bed. Relatives, friends, neighbors and people from the church come by to check on her. But 60 hours after her loss, she can’t stop the tears and the nightmare memories.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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