Three 911 calls on an afternoon of May 14 are each disturbing chapters in the same sad story.
One comes from Anthony Carl Chavez’s son as he frantically performs CPR on him outside their Servia Drive home in St. Johns County.
“Tony, Tony, don’t die on me,” he is heard saying as the emergency center is typing and sirens are sounding. ‘They’re coming. Don’t die because of me, I need you!’
The second 911 call is from a frightened neighbor who just locked herself inside after seeing an elderly man brandish a gun at her once as he walked off the cul-de-sac.
“He has been known to draw his gun multiple times,” she told a dispatcher. “There are some people in the cul-de-sac and he was walking from the cul-de-sac back to his house. And he had the gun in his hand.’
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And the third is the concluding chapter where a man tells a dispatcher that a neighbor is dead in a backyard.
“My neighbor just shot himself,” the caller says immediately, sirens approaching in the background. ‘It seems so. He’s in the back, on the lawn behind.’
‘without violence’
The incident report doesn’t say much about what led up to the shooting at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday on the suburban road off St. Johns Parkway.
According to the report, a gun was found near the body of 74-year-old Jose Alberto Melendez behind his home.
A search of court records reveals no local criminal past for either man. And Chavez’s relatives told Action News Jax that he didn’t even know him.
Melendez was out walking his dog while Chavez and son Gabriel Thoma were working on a car in the cul-de-sac. He stared at them, but it was brief and Thoma told Action News he didn’t think much about it.
Moments later, the older man walked up to him, said something to Chavez, and drew the gun. Chavez only had time to say “Whoa” before being shot twice, Thoma told the TV news channel. Melendez started firing at Thoma, who ran after a car and then called 911 while trying to save his father.
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Another neighbor from Servia Drive told First Coast News that there had been “drama,” some sort of argument, but he didn’t know any details.
In a GoFundMe plea for funeral expenses, Jessica Chavez wrote that her husband was such a loving person and “Anyone who knew him knows that he had a big heart. This horrible incident was in no way to be expected. Senseless violence.”
Despair and mortality on 911 calls
The 911 calls show a poignant scene after the gunshots that hit Chavez and the one minutes later that killed Melendez.
Thoma performs CPR on Chavez and immediately tells the dispatcher that he was shot twice. He says he is an EMT student trying to save him.
“I want you to come here as soon as possible, please!” he says.
He identifies the shooter as “a man who lives down the street.” Looks like we’ve passed his house,” he says, then turns his attention back to Chavez.
He says he isn’t breathing after being shot in the back and she.
“Stay alive Tony, you’re with me”, he hears you say and then turns to the coordinator. “Please come, please.”
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The dispatcher tells him that help is “coming as soon as they can,” while reassuring him and telling him to continue CPR.
“I’ve got this, I’ve got this,” he replies, telling the dispatcher that the gunman was going back to his house. He tells the coordinator again that he is an EMT student and has just graduated.
“He’s trying to breathe, he’s trying to breathe,” the young man says, then talks to Chavez again, urging him to stay alive.
“You won’t die because of me. I won’t let them kill you,” the conversation ended when he said, “the police just got here.”
The neighbor fills in a bit more about what happened and tells the dispatcher that she went outside after hearing ‘some loud noises’. It was then that she saw the man who “lives a few doors down” with a gun he had shown earlier.
The caller describes the shooter as a parent, wearing a hat and gray T-shirt, who made “eye contact” with her and started walking toward her. So she ran into her house and called 911.
“I think someone in the dead end chased him away or something,” she says.
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She says she also saw a man believed to be the first 911 caller “on the phone, panicking” because he also apparently called the police for help.
When first responders arrive after the first two callers, the third neighbor calls 911 about the body in Melendez’s backyard.
There’s no one else, the neighbor says, telling the emergency room that the man doesn’t seem to be breathing. Someone else then overhears talking to the caller, and they both say, “Oh, he shot himself.”
“There’s the gun,” the caller tells whoever entered the yard with him, followed by a lot of talking as the dispatcher tries to get more information.
“Oh, the police are here. I’m going,” the caller says before the call ends.
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This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: 911 Calls Released in St. John’s Murder-Suicide Between Neighbors
