EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect the accurate title for the Rev. Lisa Urivez-Karp and correct a typo in the name of her church.
HOLLAND (WHTC-AM/FM) — The girls who planned a hotel sleepover on Feb 15, 2019, aren’t sleeping much these days. Neither are those close to them. Time seems to expand and contract, and for many, a scene replays again and again in their heads.
None of it seems real, they say, though today’s funeral for 14-year-old Troy “T.J.” Wells may help mark a small step toward acceptance and healing.
A few minutes after midnight on Feb. 16, in the hallway of the Hampton Inn in Holland Township, there’s there sound of a fight in the hallway. A couple girls rush out, including Jakara Hunter, 19. Her friends call her Kari.
Hunter had talked her only brother, “T.J.,” into joining her on a quick visit to the girls at the Hampton Inn in Holland Township. Their mom drove them over, and was waiting in the car downstairs. He liked girls, but wasn’t eager about the visit, telling his sister there better be a lot of girls there, Hunter said.
Hunter had originally asked him to babysit for her daughter, offering him $20, but he refused, so she asked him to join her in visiting her friends. Their mom wasn’t eager to bring her kids there, telling them she was tired. But they talked her into it, Hunter said, and she agreed to give her brother the $20.
At the room, the door opened and Wells didn’t see too many girls, he headed down the hallway and a few seconds later, the girls heard shouting. Kari Hunter and a couple other girls rushed out. Wells was engaged in a loud arguement with a heavyset man. Hunter wanted to protect her brother. She headed down the hall, saw a room door open and a gun barrel, heard the sound of multiple shots and saw people scattering. She ran to the room for a cellphone, to call her mom.
Everything else is a blur.
Downstairs, as Wells being wheeled out to the ambulance, Hunter rushed to his side. She recalls their brief conversation:
“T.J., you OK?” she said.
“Yeah, I’m OK,” he replied.
“For real? Because mom about to kill me,” she said.
“I’m OK,” he said.
“But when we got to the hospital, it was something different,” she said. “But that’s why I’m OK, because he told me he was OK.”
But no one is really OK this week. Hunter is worried about her mom. Neither of them are sleeping well. The work of putting together an obituary, of planning a funeral for the boy they knew as fun-loving and kind is exhausting and surreal.
Police, in court documents, indicated Wells was “a known gang member.” His sister says that’s not true. Social media paints a different picture — it’s unclear if Wells belonged to a gang, or was behaving as if he was in a gang. Community leaders and police say teens are drawn to groups that provide a sense of belonging.
Michelle Humphey rented the hotel room with the intent of giving her daughter, Ariel Jones, and Ariel’s four friends a break after a series of snow days and a growing feeling of cabin fever. She saw it as a way to give the girls a chance to swim and bond before getting ready for Saturday’s Holland High Snowcoming dance. The room, Humprhey thought, made sense, what with her blended family of with teen boys, girls, and a baby at home. One of her sons was at a skating party. She’d left the hotel to pick up her son and throw in a load of laundry. She knew there was a group of rooms rented for a players in a teen hockey tournament and expected a “kid-friendly atmosphere.”
Humphrey said she had rented rooms for her kids in the past with no problem. Since Saturday, she’s experience both backlash and support. Now, she’s looking for ways to help Ariel recover from the shooting trauma, and wondering what she, as a mom, can do to help not just her blended family heal, but help the community at large.
“I don’t think these kids (who join gangs) don’t have an advocate,” she said, adding that a lack of structure for at-risk children, both at home and at school, is part of the problem.”this doesn’t need to be a race war, one gang against another gang. We need to come together as a community.”
The Rev. Lisa Urivez-Karp is a commission pastor at First Reformed Church, and working on a new congregation. She said the tragedy is affecting more than the two families directly involved, it hurts the whole community. She believes one part of the solution needs to come direcly from the children, working with adults and community authorities.
“As a church we are doing this — opening our doors — even if you look different, talk different, act different — to those in the community who feel shunned, or that they don’t belong, can come in and be part of the family,” she said, adding that actively listening and listening without judgement may help people learn what’s needed in the community to stop the kind of violence that led to Wells’ death.
Jones said she wished both the Holland and West Ottawa school district officials had provided crisis team reponders to students beyond Holland East, where Wells was a student last fall, and Macatawa Bay Middle School, which Wells attended this year. She said there were more students affected by his death than is obvious — siblings and family friends who may not be current students at either school. She, like Hunter, expressed a wish that teens would stop the violence — whether they are actively pursuing gang membership, forming cliques, or pretending to be tough.
Hunter says her brother’s death is still not real, but it might be “in a couple weeks, when I realize he’s really not coming home.”
His funeral is set for 3 p.m. today, Feb. 24, 2019, at Maple Avenue Ministries, 427 Maple Ave. in Holland, with the Rev. Denise Kingdom-Grier officiating. The church is collecting donations for Wells’ family, who will bury the teen in his Chicago hometown.
Kingdom-Grier said her church has hosted recreation programs in the past, that allowed gang members to drop their colors and related feuds to play baskeball together. She’s concerned about rumors of retaliation, but that larger concern is teens’ mental health.
While gangs activity has quietened over the years, she says hasn’t changed in terms of numbers. Instead, she said, she hears about younger kids are getting involved.
Police continue looking for a suspect in Wells murder and have named Juan Sandro Cabrera, 18, of Holland in the case. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to contact police directly or share details anonymously via Silent Observer, which pays cash rewards for tips leading to arrests and convictions.
Call Silent Observer at (877) 887-4536; text OCMTIP and the tip to 274637, or submit an online tip via www.mosotips.com.
