Troubled relationship with 15-year-old girl may have led to
murder
San Martin – A messy relationship between two 25-year-old Gilroy men with troubled pasts and a 15-year-old girl led to the beating death of Jeffrey Lamar Garner early Sunday morning at a rural estate east of Gilroy.
According to police, Garner was in an altercation with the girl when he was struck in the back of the head with a metal pipe by Rogelio Roberto Garcia Jr., who was arrested at the scene.
Garner’s family said Tuesday that the girl was Garner’s sometime girlfriend who tormented him with tales of her relationships with other men. They said the girl dragged Garner to Garcia’s Duke Drive home in the hours before the killing.
“He was set up,” Garner’s sister, Angela, said. “He was murdered and he was robbed.”
Garner’s longtime friend, Brian Ozanne, said Garner and Garcia had been friends, but recently had a falling out.
“We were all so-called friends,” Ozanne said. “The person that killed Jeff, he thought he was his friend. He trusted everybody. He trusted the guy that killed him.”
Garcia is the son of Rogelio Roberto Garcia Sr., who is serving life in prison for the 1998 shotgun murder of Deborah Gregg in Morgan Hill. The younger Garcia is being held on a murder charge and for violating a restraining order that came out of a domestic dispute involving his mother. He is scheduled to be arraigned Friday.
In the last several years, Garcia was charged with a variety of criminal and violent offenses. In Nov. 1998, he was cited for not controlling two pit bull dogs. Earlier that year he paid a fine after he was charged with a hit and run offense.
In May 2000, he pleaded no contest to possession of brass knuckles and a slung shot, a ball with protruding spikes attached to a handle with a chain. In Aug. 2000, he was placed on probation after he kicked and damaged the car of an acquaintance. At the time of his arrest Sunday morning, Garcia was already facing charges related to drug possession and violating a restraining order.
Garner, too, has a long history with the Gilroy Police Department. In his youth, he was cited at least three times for possession of alcohol. In May 2001, he was sentenced to five months for brandishing a knife and making threats to two people on Monterey Street.
Pleading for leniency in a letter to Judge Kenneth L. Shapero, Garner wrote that “I feel like I have been a failure all my life at nearly everything I have done and that without change, I will surely not survive.”
He promised to enroll in drug and alcohol recovery programs and take anger management classes, but Garner could not escape his addictions.
In April, he was arrested for an attempted theft at the First Street Long’s Drug and for throwing a chair through the window of a residence. Friday, Garner was arrested on suspicion of one felony and four misdemeanor warrants. He posted bond and was released. A day later, he was dead.
Tuesday, his family and friends described him as a big-hearted man with an alcohol problem, who went out of his way to help his friends and strangers.
“When he would drink he would get a little upset, but he would do anything for a friend,” said Carol Baty, a life-long friend of Garner who also knows Garcia. “But he would do anything for a friend. He had the biggest heart and the greatest smile. I’m concerned, that because of his record, he’ll be painted as the bad guy and he was the one who was murdered.”
Sgt. John Sheedy described Garner as someone who “definitely had a significant history with the police department,” and was fighting an anger problem fueled by alcohol.
“However,” Sheedy said, “he was a witness in a triple homicide on Second Street several years go. He came forward with significant information that helped the prosecution.”
And Angela Garner called her brother a hero who twice risked his life to save other people.
In 1999, Garner was stabbed when he intervened to save a young girl being harassed in the parking lot of Garner’s Cypress Pointe apartment. On another occasion, he raced into a small brush fire on the apartment complex grounds to save a homeless man.
“He would always make sandwiches and take them to the homeless people. He would give away his clothes,” Angela Garner said. “He never wanted any recognition.”
Garner was working at Mama’s pizza and pursuing his dream of a rap career when he was killed. His half-sister, Cassandra Castro, said that he had recently made a CD of his music and told everyone he was going to be a star someday.
“He always told us, ‘I’m gonna make it big. Just you wait,’ ” Castro said. “He told he was going to make us all rich.”
Funeral arrangements for Garner are pending. The county coroner has not yet released his body to the family.
