June 10, 2007: Violence on North Side claims another innocent

When 14-year-old Charez Jones and her boyfriend left the safety of a birthday party in north Minneapolis late Saturday, they unintentionally headed toward trouble.

As they walked down the block, three young men -- one of whom apparently had a gun -- argued on the corner of 33rd and Humboldt Avenues N.

The couple and Charez's younger stepbrother turned back and, after hearing gunshots, ran.

"I had her hand and she let me go," said Charez's boyfriend, Gerald Cepeda, 15. "I thought she was behind me."

The next time he saw Charez, she lay dead near the steps leading to the party.

Police believe Charez wasn't the intended target. As of Sunday night, no one had been arrested.

"This is where my baby was laying on the street like a dog with a bullet in the head," Charez's father, Guy Jones, said Sunday. "The only thing she did wrong was that she was at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Charez would have completed her freshman year at Edison High School on Tuesday.

Now family members are preparing for her funeral. Her father said he got a phone call about 4:30 a.m. Sunday about his youngest daughter's death.

Jones said Charez got permission from her mother to go the birthday party for a 17-year-old girl.

The party in the 3300 block of Humboldt in the Folwell neighborhood started about 8 p.m., but like most partygoers, Charez, Gerald and her younger stepbrother didn't get there until after 10 p.m.

Attendees were charged at least $2 to get in and were searched for weapons by family members standing outside.

The birthday girl's sister, Charmaine Clark, said Sunday that four young men tried to get in to the party, but three refused to be searched. The fourth went in, came out and they all left, she said.

"They acted like they were trying to hide something," said Laquanda Hamilton, Clark's cousin. "They got mad because we wouldn't let them in.

"They told my auntie, '[Expletive], we'll be back.' "

Shortly afterward, Charez and Gerald left the party to walk home. When they saw the group arguing at the corner they turned back, and Charez took out her cell phone and called a cousin for a ride home. They began to run when they heard gunshots.

Back at the party, the girls, Clark and Hamilton, said they heard at least a dozen gunshots. They said they didn't know Charez.

Police said the family that threw the party is cooperating with the investigation.

Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call the Minneapolis police tips hot line at 612-692-8477.

Charez's death was the city's 25th homicide of the year and the second involving a child. The first was 5-week-old Delijahjuan Winden, who died March 20.

The infant died when his caregiver, Daniel Leikas, raised him over his head and threw him into a car seat, according to murder charges.

'My little diva'

As Guy Jones and other family members tied flowers and pink and white (Charez's favorite colors) balloons -- along with a black one -- to a tree near the killing scene, he described his daughter as "my little diva."

He believes Charez was accidentally caught in the middle of a gang-related shooting, and he said he has asked his family not to seek any retaliation.

"I just don't want nobody else to feel the pain I feel I have to endure," Jones said as tears ran down his cheeks.

He said he last spoke to Charez, who lived with her mother and grandmother, on Thursday.

The aspiring cosmetologist, who loved getting her hair and nails done, had asked him if he would get her an outfit for the last day of school.

"She told me that she missed me, too," Jones said.

Mousie Einfeldt, 19, one of Charez's stepbrothers, tearfully said Charez "was going to be somebody, she had her whole life ahead of her. It didn't have to happen this way. Why?"

On Sunday, Gerald still had on the same clothes he had worn to the party with his girlfriend of nine months.

"I just want her back in my arms," he said. "Back with me and her family."

Terry Collins • 612-673-1790 • tcollins@startribune.com