May 5, 2020

“There was a shooting last night at Golden West, Isaiah was shot and killed.” Those words hit me harder than any other words have ever hit me. I didn’t know what to say, what to think or what to do. Time stopped, tears flowed and anger followed.

I learned of my 18-year-old cousin’s death a day after it happened on May 6. My brother and I were waiting in the car while my mom was shopping. She got the news, immediately dropped what she was carrying and ran out crying.

It’s still difficult to comprehend. It’s even more troublesome knowing the eerie similarities of our lives.

Anyone who’s spoken to me knows I’m not too fond of my hometown Visalia, California. I only celebrate the place when it’s convenient for me i.e. DJ LeMahieu hitting a grand slam, Kevin Costner winning an Oscar or introducing someone to Ken Park.

There’s not much to do but get pregnant at a young age (like my mother did) or do drugs (as I often did).

It’s not all bad, but it’s no place to prosper. For those of you reading this and still residing in Visalia, this isn’t a shot at you, but more of a synopsis for the outsiders.

I tried my hardest to escape the place and I’m fortunate I did. My cousin Isaiah Lucios Rule didn’t have that same luxury.

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“It was a Tuesday night. It wasn't a Friday night. It wasn't a Saturday night where he was like Mom I'm going to stay out or I’m going to hang out with my friends. I’ll be right back, I'm going to go get some food and he did the little laugh that he did and he walked out that door,” said Nikkole Rule.

An hour or so later around 11:30 p.m. a bit of concern starts to set in. Isaiah’s girlfriend who stayed behind lets Nikkole know that Isaiah isn’t answering his phone. Even more concerning is a social media post reporting shots fired at Golden West high school.

Nikkole scours for her iPad, finds it and tracks her son’s location. His phone’s last location is the same place shots were fired.

Nikkole calls his phone repeatedly. When that doesn’t work, she jumps in her car and rushes over to the school. She arrives at 12:01 to a slew of caution tape and cop cars. She can’t get anywhere, then drives to the other side of the school, once there, more of the same, “we saw nothing but cop cars. I keep calling him, keep calling him. We didn't know what was going on because it was pitch black.”

The lights start turning on and Nikkole’s concern is now tenfold. She sees the car that Isaiah was riding in. Her heart drops. She asks officers on scene for information. They are of no help. She asks if her son is in custody, they don’t answer. Time goes by. She waits in her car, but can’t help herself, gets out and pleads for answers.

The police now have Isaiah’s phone, “I was flipping out, why do you have my son's phone, did my son drop it?” They’re requesting the passcode. She doesn’t oblige, not knowing what’s going on and not wanting to incriminate her son if he is in custody.

She calls all his friends. She calls the county jail. Nothing. She calls the hospital. Nothing.

A sergeant finally comes over and provides some information. He tells her there are three deceased males, but can’t confirm if Isaiah is one of them. Thoughts run wild in her head. She stays there all night hoping for the best, but knowing damn well an unfathomable nightmare is unfolding.

Throughout the course of the night she watches detectives collect evidence and pull bodies out of the car.

The police finally confirm the worst around seven in the morning, “they said, ‘I can confirm Isaiah is gone’ and I fell to the ground. I had chanclas and I threw them. I was banging on the road and I was crying so hard that I couldn't breathe. They tried to take me in the ambulance. I didn't want to go. I couldn't stand. I was hitting. I was kicking. Anything and everything that you can think of, I was just there on the fucking ground screaming and crying for him, yelling, no, no, no.”

December 12, 2019.

I’m in New York City. People like to use the term “between jobs.” Nah, I was unemployed in one of the most expensive cities on Earth. I figured I’d use the last few dollars I had to attend a two week bartending school.

One of the nights I get a phone call from Isaiah. I head to the stairwell for some privacy. He’s crying. He tells me he feels stuck. He’s sad and angry not at anyone in particular, but his circumstances. He’s jobless and without money. He wants to get out of Visalia. He mentions going to Kansas where we have family. He’s not okay. He’s crying profusely. I do my best to listen, knowing exactly how he feels.

I’ve been to the most isolating parts of my mind. It’s not a good place to be. I’ve been to the abyss, places you don’t want to be mentally, when you feel so lost and shameful you don’t even want to look at yourself in the mirror. Moments when you think about jumping in front of the 4 train to escape the failure you think you’ve become. Having gone through the lows of life then coming full circle I was able to relate. I told him what I tell everyone that’s ‘going through it’: things get better. At least they’re supposed to. That’s how it’s supposed to work. When you’re at the bottom, you’re supposed to crawl your way back, albeit the process may be slow, but you’re supposed to dust yourself off, stand tall and establish a new appreciation for life. All that was supposed to happen for Isaiah, but it didn’t.

He was weeks from graduating and had plans to get out of Visalia as soon as possible. “He begged me, ‘Mom. Let's leave, let's leave’. All I wanted him to do was graduate. I pushed and pushed and pushed. Once you graduate, boy, you can leave. Once you graduate, you can get out of state and you can go wherever you want to go,” said Nikkole.

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I’ve unfortunately spent hours on social media reading negative comments on various media outlets.

Comments range from “what were they doing out so late in a pandemic?” to “Where were their parents at?”

These questions are silly to me. First and foremost you can’t judge something you don’t understand. And trust me I understand.

My high school senior year consisted of parties, drugs and more drugs. I was doing cocaine, lean, molly, weed and anything else I could experiment with. I was driving my ’94 Honda Accord packed with my friends at odd hours of the night to random cities in Tulare County. I was hopping fences and running away from cops after they broke up parties. That’s all there was to do in Visalia. And everyone was doing that. It wasn’t just the kids from broken homes like my friends and I. I was railing lines off washers in garages with kids from moderately wealthy upbringings as well.

So for people to say “what were they doing out so late in a pandemic?” is completely asinine. It was 11pm. It wasn’t 2am. And if you parents who are sitting on a pedestal thinking your children are model citizens, I suggest digging a little deeper. You might find something.

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There’s various speculation on what was led to three teenagers getting killed. I’m not going to speculate on things unknown until I lay out the facts.

Isaiah Rule, Blake Medeiros and Jose Hernandez were shot and killed on May 5, 2020. I have firsthand knowledge that Isaiah was selling weed.

Jose Hernandez I did not know. I can’t speak about his relations nor for him. I do know in November of 2019 he was arrested for possession of marijuana for sale.

Nikkole believes someone targeted the boys, “they were targeted, whether it was all three of them, whether it was one of them and Isaiah was wrong place at the wrong time. One of them three boys was targeted.”

If one of them was indeed targeted, the door for speculation opens even further. Was it a drug deal gone bad or something much more sinister than that?

A drug deal gone bad doesn’t make sense to me. My cousin was selling dubs and 8ths. When Jose was arrested, he was booked with two ounces of marijuana. I’ve been around drug dealers. I’ve lived with drug dealers. If you’re selling dubs and 8ths and you only have two ounces of marijuana on you, nobody is looking to take you out over $400 worth of product.

“You're gonna go kill three people over a fucking sack of weed, bro. I'll give you some fucking weed plants bro,” Nikkole told me.

There’s been other speculation that the murderer(s) were after a supply of Molly. If we run with that theory, the dollar amount that they were after increases, but not significantly.

Another theory is that this was gang related. My cousin had no gang ties. The closest he’s come to the gang life is rapping along to songs by Kodak Black and his favorite artist NBA Youngboy. Nikkole confirmed this, “I’d never raise him around a gun. I don't own a gun. He's never been around the gang life. I was never in the gang life. I never led that life for him to think that that was OK.”

The motive remains undetermined and there are no suspects.

I can continue to go on tangents about social media comments and speculation, but what really matters is that my cousin is gone.

Isaiah wasn’t an evil person. He was the most genuine person I knew. His radiant smile lit up the room. “You couldn't even be mad at him for five minutes. He would just be that goofy ass kid and he would just be smiling all the time. And even when he was mad, he'd only be mad for two or three minutes. And then I would walk in there and I'd say something stupid. And he would just start laughing like okay, Mom okay okay,” said Nikkole.

It’s hard to find solace in the sorrow, but Pharrell, Chad and Shay taught me that No One Ever Really Dies. I can feel Isaiah’s energy every time I listen to NBA Youngboy or Young Thug. We miss you slime. We always will.