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[Music] so [Music] [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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listening i'm your host nick and with me as always as your favorite co-host and together
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we roll tonight to the guitar bite here is the captain yeah for those about to rock
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we salute you it's good to be seen it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for tunnel friends
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[Music] today we are drinking out here by mast landing brewing company out here is
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crafted to match whatever landscape you are exploring this is a medium-bodied new england style
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india pale ale brewed with big notes of fresh citrus over a tropical foundation and let's give some thanks to our good
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friends first up a big cheers to juliana from chino hills and her cousin victoria
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a big we like your jib to ashley from manhattan kansas and it cheers to orla in new york a big
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shout out to lisa and powell ohio and it cheers to gene who is coming to us from elk river
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minnesota and last but certainly not least by a mile we have a double fisted cheers that goes
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out to ashley and larissa at hill air force base in utah everyone we just mentioned
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helped us out with this week's beer fun so a big thank you to all of you yeah b w double
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r u n beer run make sure you go to our page truechromegarage.com sign up on the mailing list
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premium you can find a link to that on our website at truechromegarage.com and that is enough of the business all
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right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
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[Music] what's the address of your emergency uh yes i need the cops that and an average
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yeah apparently a guy just shot himself you said a guy just shot himself yeah and that's uh yeah
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is that where you are yeah can you hear me yeah yeah is he breathing at all yeah
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no do you think he's been beyond any help do you want to try cpr uh uh something i'll get in the back of my
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uh okay okay you cut down uh okay i can't even get through here please hey can you hear me
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see if he's breathing thank you he is breathing he he's gasping for air how old is he do
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you know how is he maybe 20 19 20 21 somewhere like this in my head i can't really see him like her is he
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alert at all is he conscious uh he don't look like it and when did this happen um
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three minutes ago okay you're hard to hear again you're cutting out sir you're cutting out i can't understand
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what was your name uh james ray can you hear me darante martin was born in saint louis
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where he lived until he was about 10 years old then he his mom her name is erica lotz and his six
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siblings moved to park hills a town of about 8 500 residents 60 miles southwest of st louis park
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hills was a very different type of environment than the urban one in st louis first of
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all of course it was a much smaller community in a town this size most people know each other it was a much less
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racially diverse community durante and his family were very much in the minority
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one article we found describes the old lead belt region of missouri where park hills is located as 95
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white durante's family is black in the spring of this year 2021 durante was 19 years old and he had
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graduated the year before from central high school durante started out at central but then
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transferred to an alternate school due to his less than stellar attendance record while he was
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at this other school an assistant football coach from central took note of him partially because of his impressive size
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and encouraged him to get his attendance on track so he could return to central and play
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football and he did durante's cousin isaiah welch later told nbc 5 news that the two
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played on the team together and being football players changed their lives for the better
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he said quote when we were kids we used to live in the same trailer park together
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he lived right in front of me so our windows were facing each other and when our parents fell asleep we'd go
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to the windows and open up the curtains and look at each other and sneak out of the house and do
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whatever we wanted to do because we were bad kids football definitely changed us
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the coaches and stuff like that just helping us through this life because we didn't have it easy
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growing up darante was six foot three inches tall and 250 pounds and was very athletic
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his cousin isaiah said he could do a lot of things big boys like him couldn't really do he was fast and he
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could catch the ball real good there are quite a few stories in the local papers throughout durante's high
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school football career in which his prowess on the field is reported it was a star defensive tackle on
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central's rebels football team and earned himself a scholarship to a small college in another state
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but the school was requiring that darante bring up his s.a.t scores so he took a year off after high school
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and worked and studied for his entrance exams he was preparing to go to summer football camp and he held down two
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jobs one at walmart and one at a local restaurant until he was laid off during the
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pandemic then his mom bought a house in ferguson a suburb of saint louis and the family relocated again to the
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town of about 20 000 people 13 miles northwest of st louis on april 23 2021 durante left the ferguson house in
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the company of some friends from his alternative high school in park hills so he left the house
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that night with people that his mother didn't know that well he told his mom that one of them would
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drop him off at his grandmother's house this is kimberly robinson she still lived in park hills
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but durante never showed up this next bit of information is all from a statement released by madison
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county sheriff katie mccutcheon on april 29th on the sheriff's department's facebook
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page this is what they put on there captain on sunday april 25th at approximately
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301 a.m madison county dispatch received a 911 call from a residence located at 1773 highway
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z in fredericktown in reference to a 21 year old male shot in the head and was not conscious
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in the a man who 911 himself as james wade says he needs cops in an ambulance apparently a guy just shot himself he
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says to the dispatcher he confirms the highway z address a girl in the background can be heard
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crying and yelling something like i hate this he confirms that the victim is not breathing
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and then tells someone in the background to check and see if he's breathing he is gasping for air it sounds like he
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says when asked the victim's age the caller says he's 19 20 21 something like that
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where was he shot the dispatcher asked in the head the caller says no he was not alert or
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conscious the sheriff's statement continued madison county sheriff's office madison
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county ems and cherokee pass fire department was dispatched to this location upon arrival to the
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scene the male subject was located in the attic area of the residence and was found to
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be deceased the statement said the dead man was identified as darante martin age 19. sheriff mccutcheon's facebook
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statement went on to address the autopsy of the deceased saying an autopsy was performed on the deceased on monday
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april 26 2021 at the saint francis county morgue in farmington missouri the initial investigation was led by the
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madison county sheriff's and madison county coroner's office with the assistance of the missouri
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state highway patrol preliminary evidence revealed the male subject died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the
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head once the final autopsy results in all witness statements have been received
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the complete report will be submitted to the madison county prosecutor's office for
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further review so four days after the 9-1-1 call about darante being shot the sheriff had preliminarily concluded
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that this was a suicide and said so publicly well we all know my feelings about them making statements too
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early take your time say you're doing an investigation let the evidence lead you to your final
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findings you're exactly right captain because they are saying in their own statement
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this is not the final autopsy uh it is an autopsy that we performed and this is what we found
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preliminary evidence is showing us that this was a self-inflicted gunshot wound my guess is that preliminary evidence
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that they're talking about is less scientific and more witness statements right and so you're right
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if this is not the final autopsy then why release anything at all because you've not finished your job
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you've not completed the work and the other thing too if you're going to make such a statement that could be found to
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be controversial which ends up being just that maybe release a more detailed statement
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back it up with facts and actual evidence it's a very brief statement that says hey
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we reviewed it this is what happened but they don't really tell you how they got to that conclusion
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makes you question why a 19 year old is in a house that we he obviously doesn't know the house
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that well but why is he in the attic by himself and where did he get this firearm again
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that goes back to their statement we don't have much information we don't know what those witness statements would
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be so it's hard to even say that he was in that space in that attic by himself right it gets really wishy-washy here
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on this whole thing and that's what we're going to tear through right now because immediately daronte's mother and
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grandmother both dispute the suicide findings they're saying look this kid was not
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suicidal they say that darante was a big happy jolly kid and that seems to be an opinion that's
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shared by his friends and family as well well but we all know depression is a [ __ ]
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right and not always to somebody show signs of depression to others you're exactly
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right and that's such a such a sad thing and you can understand maybe mom and grandma have it wrong
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maybe that he was holding on to some kind of dark secret or maybe this was something he was able
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to keep away from his family and of course unfortunately we've all seen cases where the family is
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the last to know that their loved one is in fact suicidal but we also have some evidence
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of his mindset i mean he is working two jobs that takes a lot of energy um motivation
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to work at a walmart and a restaurant so i i'd be interested to see how many hours he's working
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but to me that that is evidence of somebody that's more motivated trying to do something with their lives
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yeah and keep in mind this is going to be going on after everything got shut down
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and so he did lose one of those jobs because of the shutdown i this is one thing that's going to
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perplex me for the rest of my days captain i don't understand why the mom and pop small stores and
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restaurants got closed during the pandemic but the giants that don't need any money like
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walmart and target were allowed to stay open and shuffle in as many people as they could but what i see here
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and this is one of these stories that look i don't love the overall story of this case i love the beginning
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of the story because what do we see here we see a young man a teenage a teenager who is not
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necessarily doing the right things right he's skipping out of school maybe kind of half-assing it along the way
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yeah but the system is not set up the school system is not set up for most kids but what i love about the story i think
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where you're going is somebody says okay well you might not like this system and this
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system might not favor you but do you like sports do you is there some interest that i
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could get you involved in i mean i hated school awful student but because i enjoyed the music programs that that
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was the gateway to try to be a good student you didn't want to miss class because
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you're going to miss jazz band or you're going to miss orchestra class or so you went to school because those
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classes kept kept you coming back and so same here oh i want to play sports why have to go
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to school i have to do mathematics and english and science classes in order to be able to play sports well
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and i don't you know the system doesn't really apply here in my opinion this is a setup where
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the kid's just not going to school i mean it doesn't matter about the reason what's set up there if you don't
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what i'm trying to do is what i'm saying is he might have gave up on school because it just wasn't working
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for him what i love is exactly what you said you see a kid that is presented an opportunity
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where and kudos to this coach who went out of the his way or her way to say hey look there's some here's something for
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you a little light at the end of the tunnel if you will if you can get your attendance up and
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actually participate in class and attend the classes there might be a spot for you on this football
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team and so what we're seeing here to me is a kid that can find motivation or be presented
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with motivation right and then work toward earning a goal an achievement and he did that
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so much so that it translated into a scholarship offer for him and now he's kind of back at that step
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again where hey i'm out of school for a year but i'm working toward getting those
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sat scores up because my scholarship is still waiting for me so of course we have his
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family that are saying they're going to present the ideas that hey there's good things
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going on in this kid's life that are i mean everything's moving in the right direction for darante at this time
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and that's why they point out that hey if he were suicidal this point in his life doesn't
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make any sense that he would be suicidal at this point in his life because things were bad before they're
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not so bad now and they're moving in the right direction like we so we know that his
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mother erica recently purchased a home in ferguson for herself and her kids this is the
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first time in durante's life that he has his own bedroom rather than sharing one with
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some of his siblings and then we have video footage that shows that he was still in the process of
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settling into his new house in his new bedroom erica his mom bought darante new sneakers new clothes and a
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flat screen tv for his room so according to the family durante was very happy erica told the tv news reporter that
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durante was so excited about their new living situation that he was showing off his new room to friends
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on video calls even though there wasn't even furniture in his room yet right and so again
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they're just kind of underlining and echoing this idea that it just didn't really make sense that
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darante who had challenges in the past would select this time in his life when things were looking up to
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take his own life and they'd have more evidence than anybody else in the world you know his mother and grandmother yes
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and we have nbc5 news who interviewed darante's former high school football coach
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who had visited with durante just a month before his death this is corey schweich who
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said he was happy big smile on his face i asked him how everything was going and
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he said great and he was having a good time and again we also circle back to the
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idea that we don't always know everything that's going on with an individual if they don't choose
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to share ones and suicide is not something that's always something that's a lingering issue true
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i believe there's some people that are very capable and having their life go in the right direction
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and sometimes just wake up on the wrong side of the bed and that day they make a decision that's
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a fatal one like everything else it can be impulsive at times now there are many things that we simply
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do not know in this case and we're not going to sit here in the garage and try to pretend
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otherwise and what we do know in this case only raises more questions for example there are no details that
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this is this is the [ __ ] sorry this case gets me a little worked up this is the stuff that that we really
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really need to be told so we can make heads or tails of what the hell happened here
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because you have a very suspicious looking situation on the surface underneath the surface
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however you want to shake it out until we know what the heck happened so what we do know only raises more
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questions for example there are no details about where the gun came from whether the gun was
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collected at the scene or even what type of gun it was and sheriff katie mccutcheon isn't talking
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they're not filling in any of those blanks for us well that's [ __ ] another thing we do not know is what
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exactly durante was doing at this house in the first place what is he doing at the place where he died
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his family says they have no idea how he ended up where he did i have a couple of thoughts but we don't
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have anything that's concrete to tell us why he would be at this house and there's reasons
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to point out and suggest that maybe this might not be the most inviting or welcoming home for darante
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to be hanging out at the house where darante was shot was the location for a party of kids
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from a different high school not central so him being 19 years old makes some sense
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he ends up at a party amongst his peers it was a girl's 18th birthday party at a home in fredericktown this is a
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tiny town of about four thousand about 27 miles south of park hills there are conflicting accounts of how darante
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ended up at this party reportedly he was brought there by some friends another rumor is that darante did not
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want to go to this party because he knew that there would be some guys or a guy that he had a beef with according to one
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source keep in mind darante's situation he's working hard to and studying trying to get those sat
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scores up because he wants to take advantage of the opportunity of that scholarship
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this does not strike me and again 19 we're all a little dumb in different ways i certainly will i was super dumb you
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and i were leading the pack of dumbness i was i was head of the class i'm happy to knock on wood i'm happy to be alive
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but so we know we we can factor in 19 year old male dumbness but what i see here is a
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guy that's not going to screw up this opportunity that's being handed to him and so showing up at
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a place where you know something might go down or please get called yeah isn't going to help you on your way to that
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scholarship well also maybe you just don't want to fight somebody true no hey it's friday night you're
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working your butt off the last thing you want to do on your free time is then have a fight
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you know you just want to hang out with people have a good night according to one source
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and please take this with a shot of whiskey and grain of salt as it has not been confirmed by any of
00:24:39
the authorities again they're not really saying anything but this piece of information hasn't even
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been confirmed by darante's family but what the rumor is is that there was a white
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teen at this party who had been arrested for first-degree assault in the past and for whatever reason this guy
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believed that darante had ratted him out to the cops and the rumor that was going around is this
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dude wanted payback and he was preparing to get it aided by you know a group of his friends now we
00:25:12
were able to verify that this guy named online as adam rulo was indeed arrested for
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serious assault on another guy and it involved a shooting we found this article in the
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park hills missouri daily journal dated april 15 2021 just three weeks before darante's death
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that says an area man faces felony charges in saint francis county after allegedly shooting another man in
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february adam ruleo 19 of park hills was charged on wednesday with first degree assault
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and armed criminal action according to a probable cause statement from the saint francis county
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sheriff's department rulo reportedly shot a man on february 17 at a location on route dd south of
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farmington the bullet reportedly hit the alleged victim in his stomach area and lodged near the man's spine the
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report states that doctors are unable to remove the bullet from the man's body due to its location
00:26:15
the lodge projectile now reportedly prevents the man from engaging in any sporting activities court records
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show rulo has previous convictions of fourth degree assault stemming from a 2019 incident
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and he pled guilty to the charge and was given a suspended sentence of two years of unsupervised probation
00:26:38
yeah so we have this guy that this teenager that wants to be a gangster and then we have this other teenager
00:26:44
that not only is he trying to get his life together his mother is a shining example of
00:26:50
progression through life and and winning at the game of life through hard work and you know this thing we review this
00:27:01
situation from the newspaper article here and we understand it's a totally unrelated
00:27:06
incident but it does show that one this adam rulo was involved in a skirmish right before ronte's death with a
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firearm exactly two he likes to shoot people yeah so if the rumor was that he wanted to
00:27:22
get payback against darante this statement could hold some weight this rumor could hold some weight
00:27:29
because there is this information backing some of that thought up right and no matter if you're 6'3
00:27:36
250 you're not going to go in to a gunfight with fisticuffs so that might be another reason why
00:27:44
he didn't want to go to a party where this individual might be at because he knows this
00:27:49
individual whether it's he has extra friends but he knows this individual is probably carrying a gun
00:27:56
and probably going around telling everybody that he's carrying around guns again this could mean absolutely zero
00:28:04
right but what it does is it starts to piece together that we have this guy that we know to be
00:28:12
involved in gun violence that may or may not have been at this party we don't have
00:28:18
confirmation that adam ruler was at the party just allegations posted online by people
00:28:24
claiming to be in the know saying that he was in fact there so we have if they are right and he
00:28:31
was there then we have a situation where we have a guy that we know to be involved in gun
00:28:37
violence is at the same place at the same time as someone who ends up being killed by way of gun
00:28:45
well this along with the evidence and thought process of his mother and his grandmother these are reasons
00:28:54
that you don't come out and give findings of suicide until you're absolutely 100 percent sure thank you
00:29:12
[Music] [Music] all right we're back cheers to the people this nasty people in the front and uh
00:29:51
cheers to you colonel but also look we're not experts we're not health mental health experts so
00:29:59
anything that we're saying um know that we take suicide very serious and if you are
00:30:06
struggling with anything a number that you can call is 1-800-273-8255 that's the national
00:30:15
suicide prevention lifeline and they will be happy to talk with you as much as you need it now darante's
00:30:24
shooting captain took place at a home owned by a man named james wade reportedly that night was his daughter's
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18th birthday party in an interview with kdsk saint louis wade said that he got home
00:30:39
from fishing about 30 minutes before he heard the shot he said he was downstairs and he heard
00:30:47
the gunshot from upstairs he called 9-1-1 to try to help he said it needs to be said that this guy wade
00:30:54
has never been named by police in this case in fact some mainstream media outlets won't even publish his
00:31:01
name but he has a public facebook page and has posted openly about this case and acknowledged the
00:31:09
shooting at his home in social media and in interviews so we consider his name fair game darante's mother
00:31:17
erika lotz says that her son had zero connections to this wade guy according to nbc 5 news
00:31:25
wade said that his daughter didn't know darante well but he showed up at their house with
00:31:31
some other friends who the other party attendees were has never been released to the public my guess
00:31:40
here is captain she's turning 18 maybe a certain percentage maybe even a large percentage of these other party
00:31:48
attendees might be minors and that might be the thought for not releasing the names and we know how high school
00:31:55
parties go we don't know if this was supposed to be this huge birthday bash or if it was hey we're having 15 20
00:32:04
people over and then that turns into everybody and their brother showing up i want to throw something out here too
00:32:10
because i think this is lost in the mix here because there's a lot to get heated about in this case a lot to
00:32:16
get worked up on and sometimes we can overlook or under think some of the information that's provided
00:32:24
to us and you're not going to hear me come to the defense of this james wade very often heck this might be
00:32:32
the only time in this episode that i do so but because we don't have clarity or an understanding of
00:32:40
like you said captain the the parameters of this party we also need to keep in mind there's a
00:32:47
chance there's a chance that james wade may not have known this party was going to be
00:32:53
happening in his house right high school kids i don't know if this is a news flash for
00:32:58
anybody out there if it is you late to the party yourself but uh news flash sometimes high school kids have parties
00:33:07
at their parents homes and the parents don't know about it and maybe they thought
00:33:14
maybe his daughter thought dad's going to be gone the whole night fishing and came home and found oh there's a
00:33:20
party in my house and for all we know he was tipped off by somebody hey do you know there's
00:33:25
all these people at your house and then we go back to something else that we again it's a lot of we do not know um
00:33:34
we don't know what durante was doing in the attic of this house or if anybody else was
00:33:41
with him at the time that this gun goes off well it's also not clear because an addict here to me you'd have to get
00:33:50
up in to somebody's crawl space and so you'd be going through a little rinky dink ladder
00:33:57
through a little hole or was there attic something where it was like a a third level that they just used as storage or
00:34:05
something yeah i'm guessing this must be uh i have no idea you're right some of them are quite
00:34:12
small in tight spaces there's other ones that people turn into rooms right in their home heck clark griswold
00:34:20
spent a whole afternoon in his attic one day so yeah we don't know what he was doing
00:34:25
up in this space of the house and if there was anyone with him at the time when this gun went off
00:34:30
if you could prove that there wasn't anybody with him then we'd have a pretty open and shut
00:34:35
case right again they've they being the sheriff's department have come to a conclusion
00:34:42
but they're not telling us how they arrived at that conclusion now on the flip side of what i said
00:34:49
about james wade not knowing about this party that there's a small chance that that
00:34:53
happened rumors are that james wade was known to host these types of parties where there is
00:35:01
underage drinking going on so a responsible parent right there's also a rumor and if mr wade
00:35:10
wants to come out at me for some of these rumors this is all stuff that can be found online
00:35:18
uh this is not stuff that i'm just creating and making up so there you need to come out a lot of
00:35:24
people but there's a strong i would say there's a good rumor going around that he might be involved in some
00:35:34
drug dealing or low-level drug dealing and maybe these parties if in fact he is hosting
00:35:41
or allowing these parties to go down at his home right that maybe some of the party attendees
00:35:47
are his customers if you want to call him that again we can't verify any of this these
00:35:53
are all rumors and accusations posted by other people on the madison county sheriff's facebook page
00:36:00
and wade's own page they might not be customers but he might view this as a business
00:36:07
opportunity now this next bit contains information that we cannot back up we cannot find
00:36:12
any articles reporting it but many people in the area have pointed out in the wake of darante's death
00:36:19
that there was a previous suicide of a young man on james wade's property now again we cannot verify this but in a
00:36:29
way james wade himself did so someone screen grabbed a text response he sent to their phone we don't know
00:36:38
what it was in response to but here's what wade's response said hey stupid ass it's only two
00:36:45
suicides that have happened and i wasn't here for either of them you blank [ __ ] it goes on but it's
00:36:54
just more derogatory and insulting language so we'll leave it out oh come on read it well
00:37:01
the interesting thing here captain is i don't think it's very hard for people to believe
00:37:09
that a suicide went down at someone's house now if you told me that two of them went
00:37:16
down at someone's house something's wrong right don't you start to question everything
00:37:24
at that point you go okay we need to review both of these situations in detail and really get to the bottom of what's
00:37:32
going on because it doesn't make no sense no now what makes james wade extremely suspicious in
00:37:39
the eyes of the martin family and the activist community is that he is a racist and white supremacist his
00:37:47
facebook profile picture is not a photo of himself but rather a cartoon drawing of a middle finger imposed against an
00:37:54
american flag background with the caption here's my apology for being white according to nbc 5 news in 2017
00:38:04
and 2018 wade posted pictures on his facebook page including one of a black man with a chain around his neck and the
00:38:12
words my great great great grandfather's tractor oh so this guy wade is a giant piece of [ __ ] yes
00:38:21
he is you can smell the racism well and that's what we're we're pointing out here is that
00:38:27
even if let's pretend everything went down just as as we're told that it did right
00:38:36
this guy is not a good guy and horrible guy and even just this happening one suicide
00:38:44
on his property of a black young male should be looked at under the lens of suspicion
00:38:54
yes i mean look we talked about ayla reynolds case and one thing that was local rumor that we didn't
00:39:03
report on in that case because we had a lot of facts in that case but one rumor that i believe to have
00:39:11
been true is that when the police showed up to the call of this missing little kid
00:39:17
there's beer bottles and beer cans and paraphernalia all over the house paraphernalia don't
00:39:23
you go into that situation saying there's a missing toddler and this is what i'm seeing
00:39:28
is going on in the house when all these kids are here and you look at that under a lens of
00:39:33
suspicion you show up to a racist home where a person of a different ethnicity dies on his property you're looking at
00:39:45
this with a suspicion with some suspicion yeah because your job is to serve and protect every citizen
00:39:54
no matter what race they are but on top of that you owe it to this family you owe it to the
00:40:01
community to say this wade guy is suspicious because of his ignorant thoughts on the world and of other
00:40:13
people and so we have to do we need to double down on our due diligence and make sure that
00:40:21
we are as transparent as possible not only with the family but the community well murder and
00:40:27
violence involves a certain level of anger and hate and you can obviously see that this man
00:40:34
has some hate in him yes he has a motive the other thing that points to him being a racist
00:40:41
is and this again is from his social media stuff was another picture this is of a black
00:40:47
dog and the words i had a black dog once i named him food stamps yeah so these all appear to be
00:40:55
memes constructed by other people and and maybe wade reposted these but it's clear that he endorses
00:41:03
the racist sentiments that they express and we don't know if durante knew but hey this house that
00:41:11
we're going to this party not only is there a guy that might show up that i don't want anything to do with
00:41:17
but her this girl's dad is a known racist and maybe that would be another reason you wouldn't want to
00:41:25
go to this party as for who killed darante james wade said in one of several interviews i know that i didn't
00:41:35
do it and i tried to help him but nobody's talking about that so i guess he's looking for praise
00:41:41
for calling 9-1-1 but there's more after darate's death wade posted the following
00:41:47
image on his facebook page a photo of a white man a middle-class dad looking type of dude
00:41:54
with a large handgun pointing at something off camera he's standing in a home shielding a wife and baby behind him the
00:42:03
caption says don't get it twisted i believe all lives matter regardless of color however that belief
00:42:11
is null and voided if you invade my home and endanger my family i don't know exactly what message
00:42:19
he's trying to put out with that but at the very least when you're being talked about
00:42:26
and you have someone who dies from a gun related incident inside your home not only are you racist and i i know
00:42:36
that this these words go hand in hand and are often in the same sentence so i'm no
00:42:41
genius here but not only do you come off as racist you come off very incredibly ignorant at the same time no
00:42:49
and the thing too is we we're supposed to applaud you we're supposed to give you praise
00:42:55
because you called 911 go [ __ ] yourself now many people online saw this statement as some type of
00:43:05
confession particularly because his daughter carrie posted that there wasn't a party and
00:43:12
durante was not supposed to be there her posts are clearly trying to divert blame from her family
00:43:18
here's one of the posts on facebook quote there was no alcohol there wasn't even a party my sister's celebration was
00:43:25
over before midnight he wasn't even there or invited to our family [ __ ] he was there with his friend zach
00:43:35
so so that's where you i sit there go well which is it you know he's there he wasn't there he was there
00:43:42
there was a party there wasn't a party it's almost like she's trying to imply well he wasn't there and then so he was
00:43:48
trespassing but publicly so if you're stating that this individual is trespassing
00:43:54
your father is now posting uh a picture stating hey i'll shoot anybody that's threatening my family or trespassing on
00:44:02
my property so are you saying that you killed this guy and now you're you're stating it's a
00:44:09
suicide well james wade publicly has stuck to his story uh regardless of what his daughter's
00:44:17
posted online he said that he was downstairs and durante suddenly shot himself upstairs
00:44:24
he has not tried to portray darante as an intruder at any time or site the stand
00:44:29
your ground defense instead he's saying that darante did this to himself let's get into some more of the
00:44:38
family's questions that they have in in greater detail here uh we have darante's mom erica who
00:44:45
has not been happy with the information or lack thereof that the family has been
00:44:49
getting or not getting from the madison county sheriff's office okay here but here's my question
00:44:54
if they ruled it a suicide then the case is closed and they would have every opportunity to receive the whole
00:45:04
case file have they been able to do this yet yes they have and that's where we end up with more so they're
00:45:12
saying we got the case i don't think they don't jump blanks no they don't have the case file
00:45:18
they don't have the case file but that we have some more information that is coming from his family rather than the
00:45:23
sheriff's office and she is saying that his mother has said publicly that she never spoke with anyone
00:45:32
from the sheriff's department until a month after her son died and she told a reporter that she never received
00:45:40
official word of darante's death she heard about it from someone else you know they didn't show
00:45:46
up with officers on her doorstep to inform her what happened further she was never given any details
00:45:52
or explanations of the circumstances from the sheriff's department erica recorded a conversation she had
00:46:01
with sheriff katie mccutchen when she finally got her on the phone this was in may
00:46:06
of 2021. the sheriff would not discuss things like the caliber of the gun that killed durante or where the gun came
00:46:14
from which that's a big deal because there's nobody saying that it was darante's gun that he
00:46:20
showed up at the scene with the gun that he had a gun that he owned a gun yeah and that's they're not even telling you
00:46:30
that they have evidence that he shot a gun and then on so then on top of that you have this
00:46:35
racist known at least low-level drug dealer that might have weapons in the house
00:46:43
possible and if it comes from you know [ __ ] bag wade if it's his gun well there's more questions
00:46:54
well in the recording it can be heard that um sheriff katie mccutchen says that she
00:46:59
could not discuss the ongoing investigation with the the victim's mother she put erica in touch with the madison
00:47:06
county sheriff's a sheriff deputy named nick adams who also gave her virtually no information and refused to
00:47:13
discuss the gun part of the case nbc 5 news got a hold of that recorded conversation
00:47:20
so you can find that if you do a little bit of digging here's a piece from it that i found
00:47:25
interesting we have erica the mother saying do you have anybody a suspect are you going to arrest anybody
00:47:31
and the deputy adam's replying i can't really discuss any of that but i can tell you i've talked to
00:47:37
everyone that was there that night i've taken statements from everybody and the investigation is ongoing
00:47:43
erica can you tell me where the gun came from adams responds i cannot ma'am here's the
00:47:50
other difficult thing here we have within a few days of them saying publicly on their facebook page we've
00:47:58
done a partial autopsy it's not finalized yet we have some preliminary evidence they don't say what that is exactly but
00:48:09
we've ruled this to be a suicide and here you have a recorded conversation that is taking place
00:48:15
after that information is released on the sheriff's department on their facebook page to where the
00:48:21
deputy is clearly telling the victim's mother we cannot discuss an open investigation
00:48:28
that's them confirming it's an open investigation and if it's not then don't use those
00:48:33
words and and that is that's always the wall that some of these officers stand behind
00:48:43
when they don't want to be it's not just about being forthcoming it's they are aware they're being looked
00:48:49
at under a lens of suspicion and so their best answer is no answer at all in another odd and
00:48:57
concerning twist erica says she never recovered durante's personal item she has never
00:49:04
like his clothing he was wearing his shoes his wallet have never been returned to her the
00:49:10
madison county coroner scott follis has told lotz uh his mother all of her son's belongings went with
00:49:20
him to the mortuary which handled the funeral and the representatives from the mortuary
00:49:28
said that they never received the any personal belongings of durantes from the coroner so it's uh
00:49:36
one person pointing the finger at another and then there's a finger pointing right back at them
00:49:42
now this is odd we have a situation where she does end up receiving maybe something that could provide
00:49:54
some evidence in this case and that is durante's phone and this is a few days after his death
00:50:02
one of the teens who picked up darante from erica's house came over to her home a few days after the death and brought
00:50:14
darante's cell phone to erica and erica told nbc news through tears all of his contacts
00:50:21
were gone his text messages were gone yeah that's shady i would like to know more about this phone and
00:50:28
this is where look durante's mother and grandmother and family are doing everything that
00:50:35
they should be doing in my opinion in this case they're getting answers that don't make
00:50:39
sense that don't add up that they don't like so they are going to the public and
00:50:45
saying look there's a problem here we don't know or understand exactly what the problem is
00:50:50
but there's a problem so i applaud them for that and i want to push a little further can
00:50:57
we learn some more information about this phone about darante's phone could it be
00:51:03
as simple as someone was trying to access the phone in it and it cleared itself off you know after too
00:51:11
many tries of the wrong password or that's not what would happen you know lock your phone out but it's not going
00:51:17
to delete your contacts and i'd i'd also want to know what was the call history do we have
00:51:23
do we have call history do we have text message history if all that stuff is cleared
00:51:30
you have a very suspicious item well i would believe that you could obtain some of that information from the
00:51:37
service provider yeah possibly or if it was backed up in some way but again we don't know
00:51:42
the make in the model of the phone but still that's very suspicious that all the
00:51:48
contacts and everything but they cleared yeah the service provider would have a call log of incoming and outcoming calls
00:51:56
and probably incoming and outgoing text not the actual messages themselves but who the numbers
00:52:03
were going to right and so that's what i'm saying i i would like if if his family is looking for a public
00:52:10
outcry then i urge them to do what the sheriff's department is not willing to do for them
00:52:19
put out some more information let's let's really try to stir the pot with some some more information because is this
00:52:27
there are phones that are are easily wiped clean more than others [Music] and it can be done unintentionally
00:52:38
is this something that someone actually had to physically go through and and clear everything out i would
00:52:44
like a little more information on that i would also especially if if mom or the next of kin
00:52:52
could contact the service provider and try to get some information from them and
00:52:56
i encourage them to do that because you know who's not doing it is the sheriff's
00:53:00
department well they're probably doing it they're just not releasing any of that
00:53:03
information because they want to only release things that fit their narrative and i i think the
00:53:11
other thing too is with this they didn't even yeah the night when they retrieved the
00:53:17
body from the home so i and i'm i wasn't there i don't know if they were asking about the phone and
00:53:24
and searching for it themselves but it seems like when you show up and somebody dies from
00:53:29
uh a gunshot suicide at a party which is very odd a suicide atta at a party at a house that there has already been
00:53:42
another suicide well and the thing here too is i wrote down you know some questions i had about
00:53:48
the case and and the the night the the scene um and some of the the things that could
00:53:56
result in evidence and one of the questions i wrote down here is now that durante's family has the phone
00:54:03
in their possession uh we know that they received it a few days after after he passed away but
00:54:12
did they at any time attempt to give it to the authorities to turn it over to law
00:54:18
enforcement and yeah but why would you turn over anything to the example already don't do that
00:54:26
because again it doesn't seem that the sheriff's department is overly concerned with anything
00:54:31
other than what they have already found or concluded and again i don't know much about this
00:54:36
phone i don't i don't know the bank and model but if it has a sim card or something
00:54:41
like that you could you know all you'd have to do is get that sim card out and then
00:54:47
there'd be no information on the phone well and you could hire a forensic technician someone that
00:54:52
that's that has expertise in this area and they can go through but i think if that
00:54:57
sim card's gone that there might not be a way to retrieve any of that information
00:55:03
but again it's an expert it's a tidbit of uh it's a little knowledge nugget but we
00:55:08
don't have the whole meal there right there we don't know if we don't know why it
00:55:13
doesn't have any information on it is it as simple as you said that somebody removed the sim card
00:55:18
again if dorantes and this is me pleading with them if you are looking for a public outcry
00:55:25
to get the answers that you deserve us as the public we need some more information tell us everything about
00:55:32
that phone well the sad thing is there already should be outcry i mean the fact that
00:55:37
they're rolling into suicide before they collect all the evidence there's two suicide at this dirt bag at
00:55:43
this known racist house possible underage drinking underage drug use um you also have uh i don't know
00:55:53
was he a convicted felon that was there that had an issue well again i i want to make sure
00:55:59
that we're discussing a lot of rumors here in the garage today and i'm separating a couple of those
00:56:06
rumors out from the others because we don't have anything to back it up so the things that we need to
00:56:13
be very clear on is one we don't know if james wade deals any types of any kind of drugs or
00:56:23
illegal substances at all we do we do not know that we don't have anything that that really strongly points to that
00:56:31
other than there's local rumor that that's going on we also don't have other than people
00:56:39
saying that this this uh felon was there that night we don't have anything other than that where in some cases we
00:56:49
have like james wade himself saying there was only two suicides here so that rumor
00:56:55
seems to have some truth or at least enough that james wade is defending himself
00:57:00
on that level uh so well and it's also the the conflicting stories between him and his daughter about how many
00:57:10
people were there when the party took place it's you know it's very suspicious now you get his
00:57:17
phone back and there's no information on the phone even more suspicious the fact that cops are not even it's
00:57:25
almost like we're not contacting you i mean you're again you're supposed to serve
00:57:33
and protect you're not serving this family even if if you believe a hundred percent that it
00:57:41
was and the evidence shows that it's a suicide sit down with the family explain it to them take the time
00:57:48
that's your job serve and protect doesn't matter what color the victim is well that might be the case captain
00:58:03
it either they're not they're not sharing this information or doing their due diligence
00:58:08
because of the color of the victim's family or maybe they just don't do it at all maybe
00:58:14
they're just shitty at their jobs maybe they don't do it regardless of the color of anybody
00:58:20
that they're just bad at what they do and guess what bad sheriffs don't get reelected
00:58:25
now they shouldn't do like you said you have you have a community that's primarily
00:58:31
white and that community needs to stand up for all their citizens and say this this isn't right
00:58:37
and they need to start thinking what if this was my son what if this was my daughter would i
00:58:41
want answers yes you would and you need to stand up and when it's time to uh reelect any of these knuckleheads you
00:58:51
say we ain't doing it because they they play privilege and and and use a piece of [ __ ]
00:59:02
if you stand by and let this stuff happen this is not right what's happening to this family
00:59:08
and again all they want is answers all they want is some cooperation that's all they want
00:59:19
[Music] thank you for joining us here in the garage for everything true crime check us out at truecrimegarage.com make
00:59:35
sure you sign up on our mailing list and until tomorrow so much more case to get to
00:59:42
be good be kind and don't win [Music] [Applause] you