ROCKY FORD — Sitting in her bed early one morning in mid-October, Viola Jacquez heard the familiar rap-rap-rap of her son Jack’s knocks at her backdoor.
She unlocked the latch at about 2 a.m., and her 27-year-old son stepped into the kitchen. An unfamiliar, redheaded Rocky Ford police officer angrily followed him, raised his gun inches from Viola’s head and — before she could protect her son — shot him in the back, she said.
“I froze,” Viola Jacquez, 59, remembered this week in the spot where the officer stood. “Honestly, I froze. I could not speak, but I could see. It was one of those moments where you’re falling off a cliff.”
The officer’s bullet pierced Jack Jacquez near his heart, passing through his chest. It left his body and sailed over the orange and red carpet of the dining and living rooms, past his collection of DVDs and the Coca-Cola polar bear he brought back from Utah, lodging in the door at the other end of the house.
WATCH: The family of Jack Jacquez describes his shooting death and the community reacts
As Jack Jacquez lay dying on the floor, the officer fired an orange stream of pepper spray at his back before hurrying out of the home.
Rocky Ford, a southeastern plains town of 4,000 roughly 50 miles east of Pueblo, sits high among the thirsty farmland stained tan by the winter cold. The town is better known for cantaloupes and the hum of passing freight trains than political unrest, but anger boiled over as it found itself another epicenter in the debate over police brutality and race.
Like the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York, Jacquez’s slaying raised questions of excessive force and race. Police Officer James Ashby is white, and Jacquez was Latino and unarmed.
Unlike those deaths at the hands of police, Jacquez’s slaying remained mostly unnoticed. One other major difference: Ashby has been charged with second-degree murder and faces the possibility of years in prison.
“It was all too fast,” Viola Jacquez said of the Oct. 12 shooting.
The Denver Post found Ashby had been accused of professional misconduct several times at his previous policing job and was the subject of an excessive-force investigation filed days earlier.
With his arrest last month, Ashby, 41, became the first Colorado law enforcement officer in more than two decades to face a murder charge in an on-duty death. A Denver officer was acquitted in a 1992 shooting.
Viola Jacquez says that moments before her son was shot she saw him struggle with Ashby over a skateboard before her son let go and walked away.
She says her son was heading home after a haircut at a friend’s house before the shooting.
Small-town gossip has been active about why Ashby followed Jacquez and shot him, but court documents are sealed
. A 23-year-old man who rode along with Ashby that night has not spoken publicly.
Ashby was due in court Monday for a preliminary hearing, but it was rescheduled for Jan. 15.
The mayor of Rocky Ford, Jerry Sitton, said anger over the shooting, which sparked fears of violent, destructive protests and drew a consolation specialist from the U.S. Department of Justice, has “pretty well blown over.”
To those close to Jack Jacquez, some of whom marched in protest through the town’s streets chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot!” and “No justice, no peace!,” that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“This is just the beginning,” said Antonio Ulloa, the slain man’s friend who said he has felt ignored by police because of his Latino heritage.
“It’s been that way in this valley my whole life,” he said.
Ashby was arrested Nov. 14 and fired the same day. He originally was held on $1 million bail before it was lowered to $150,000, which he posted.
“We’re going to fight these charges to the fullest extent,” said Michael Lowe, Ashby’s Denver attorney.
Ashby served in the Navy as a mechanic in his 20s before moving back to southern Colorado, where he worked in loss prevention at a Kmart in Pueblo for one month in the fall of 2007. He was fired from that job because of “claims made against me by a fellow employee,” he said in a police job application. From there he worked as a clerk at a Loaf ‘N Jug.
In 2009, he was hired as a Walsenburg police officer. The Post obtained Ashby’s 96-page internal affairs and disciplinary records file from his roughly five-year employment there. The file includes allegations that he used profane and derogatory language on the job and one alleged instance of sexual harassment against a dispatcher.
The file also documents how a handcuffed suspect in Ashby’s custody escaped and was spotted running through town. Ashby later was forced to pay for the handcuffs, which the suspect removed using bolt cutters.
In June 2014, five months before he shot and killed Jacquez, Ashby joined the nine-person Rocky Ford police force. Records show he already had been named as part of three internal investigations, including allegations of excessive force in early October.
Rocky Ford police officials did not review Ashby’s Walsenburg records when they hired him, instead relying on verbal recommendations from his former supervisors, said Frank Gallegos, chief of the Rocky Ford Police Department.
“It’s a call I was hoping I would never get in law enforcement,” said Gallegos, a lifelong town resident, of Jacquez’s death. “It’s devastating not only for the community, but it’s a situation that has also affected other officers.”
Gallegos says he understands why people are upset and has been working to rebuild community trust, implementing body cameras for on-duty officers.
“For the community of Rocky Ford, this was a tragic event,” said James Bullock, the 16th Judicial District attorney who is prosecuting the case. “This affected almost every person in the community. A lot of people don’t think they are safe.”
Bullock is reviewing several binders filled with evidence compiled by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the State Patrol and local law enforcement agencies.
Viola Jacquez hasn’t moved back into her home since the shooting, returning only to grab her cats and occasionally speak to her son in his room.
Candles mark the spot where Jack Jacquez’s head and feet came to rest after he was killed. A stain marks the spot on the area rug where his sister cleaned away blood and pepper spray. A tiny bullet hole in the front door serves as a reminder of a night the family cannot forget.
Jackie Jacquez-Lindenmuth kneeled in the freshly disturbed dirt of her brother’s grave Wednesday, saying she feels good when she comes to the burial ground. It is marked by a tiny Christmas tree and night lights, left there because her brother hated the dark.
“I like to think of him still at my mother’s house,” she said. “This is just a place for people to come and visit.”
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JesseAPaul
