John Jefferson
Inset: Tyshaun Drummond (Ocean County Prosecutors Office). Background: Drummond’s arrest by police after he shot two men in an apartment in New Jersey (Toms River Police Department via Asbury Park Press).
A New Jersey man learned his fate for killing a father in front of his children and his wife — who was also the killer’s lover — along with the victim’s friend and admitting to cops, “I shot everybody in the face.”
Tyshaun Drummond, 42, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the murders of Nicholas Hardy, 36, and Sergio Chavez-Perez, 32, Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer announced in a Thursday press release.
He was convicted in October of two counts of murder after a nearly monthlong jury trial. He was also found guilty of possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a weapon and burglary.
The murders occurred on Dec. 19, 2021, at an apartment complex in Toms River.
Lakewood Township police were called to the scene on a report of shots fired. Police dispatch supplied the officers with a description of the suspect who fired the shots. Responding officers located an individual matching the description — later identified as Drummond — in front of the apartment complex. Officers ordered Drummond to lie on the ground. When Drummond refused to comply, police shocked him with a stun gun. The arrest was captured on police body camera footage shown in court.
During his arrest, he told police, “I shot everybody in the face,” the Asbury Park Press reported.
Police found the bodies in the apartment. They had been shot in the head.
During the trial, details emerged about an affair Chavez-Perez’s wife was having with Drummond and the victim’s own drunken, ominous words the night before he was killed.
“Tonight, somebody’s going to die,” the victim said, according to testimony from his wife Araceli Perez, the Asbury Park Press reported. Perez’s 12-year-old daughter then told her that Chavez-Perez “grabbed a knife,” Perez testified, and said that she sent a text to Drummond warning him that her husband had left the house with a knife, according to the report.
Perez testified that she had been having an affair with Drummond and walked prosecutors through text messages the two had exchanged, including one in which she said to Drummond, “Good morning, my love and future husband.”
In one message on Oct. 26, 2021, he warned her to delete the texts so her husband wouldn’t find them.
A GoFundMe page for Chavez-Perez said he was a father of three.
“No money can bring him back, but with their breadwinner gone, the least we can do as a community is help them get over this shock by covering funeral expenses, and other basic needs for the family,” the page said.
Read the full article here