A Mountain View teenager was shot and killed Monday outside his grandmother’s home in Oregon, about 13 miles south of Portland.
Adrien Wallace, the boy’s 41-year-old uncle, has confessed to killing 16-year-old St. Francis High School student Nicolas Juarez and 71-year-old Saundra Wallace — the teen’s grandmother and suspect’s mother — with a hunting rifle on the evening of June 4.
“The motive is unclear at this point,” said Sgt. Adam Phillips, public information officer for the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office.
According to Phillips, his department received multiple 911 calls at about 6:17 p.m. on June 4. Callers reported hearing a number of shots fired.
Responding officers found the bodies of Juarez and the elder Wallace in the driveway of the home where local news reports indicate the alleged gunman lived with his mother.
A June 5 story on The Oregonian’s website reports that the boy had just spent a “special week” with his grandmother traveling to various sites around Seattle, and that the two were planning to come to California when tragedy struck the night before they were set to leave the home.
Wallace, the shooter, was standing in the driveway of the house, located in the 18800 block of Indian Springs Circle, in Clackamas County, and was on the phone with 911 dispatchers when officers arrived at the scene and was taken into custody “without incident,” Phillips said. Wallace appeared in court June 5 and is scheduled to appear again on Friday, according to The Oregonian.
“Nick was the light of all of our lives: a young man of strong faith who loved life and his family. Nick was deeply loved by his parents, Martin and Tamara Juarez, his younger sister Sonia, and his entire extended family, schoolmates, band mates and fellow soccer players,” the Juarez family wrote in a statement released to media June 5. “Sue Wallace was a beloved mother and grandmother who doted on her grandchildren whom she loved spending all of her spare time with.”
“I think people are shocked,” Phillips said of the community’s reaction to the incident. “It’s difficult, regardless of who you are.”
I’m very sorry for the loss of this bright young man.
Such a tragedy. It illustrates the importance of research being done to deal with mental health, and across the board, in terms of age. It cannot be ignored or disregarded, as it could be anyone, and in anyone’s family.
This will affect local teens in perhaps a greater way than teen suicide has, as this was the life of a teen with a promising future, ended at the hands of an emotionally disturbed adult family member.
The faith community needs to step to the plate, and lead the way, as they did during the community’s streaks of suicide. It is ones faith that we rely on, during times of trial like this.
Perhaps education can begin at the church during the boy’s funeral, with pastors and elder leaders planting healthy seeds of faith that will later grow in the lives of those of his young friends and his family that now mourn. God help us all, and those that are mourning this loss.
I’m so very sorry for this family’s loss, too. What an unspeakable tragedy.