STOCKTON, Calif. — One man is dead in what Stockton police say was a "random" home invasion.
It happened Tuesday night shortly after 10 p.m. at a two-story apartment on Marsh Street off Filbert Street in Stockton. Police said the suspect, 42-year-old Fredrick Wesley, knocked on an apartment door and then forced his way in.
Inside the apartment were three children, ages 10, 12 and 9 and an 18 year old.
"Dude came out right in front of me," neighbor Cody Horcon said.
Horcon heard the gunshots and quickly ran down from his upstairs apartment.
A nine-year-old girl, hit over the head with a gun and held by the suspect, pleaded with him for help.
"I'm standing in front of her and behind him. She says that and he looks at me and he's holding a gun in his hand and I'm like, 'Uh?' But he stopped and he looked and he took off," Horcon said.
He comforted the little girl and then flagged down police who were quickly arriving.
"I was like 'dude went that way, he went that way.' And, as soon as I said that, dude starts coming back, and he's like, 'Hey, I'm the shooter. I'm the shooter. I give up. I give up'," Horcon said.
Police say someone in the apartment phoned their grandmother and uncle, 32-year-old Tyrone Deloney, who lived nearby for help. But, when they arrived, the 52-year-old grandmother and Deloney were both shot.
Deloney, who worked as a Stockton restaurant waiter, was rushed to a hospital but died. The condition of the grandmother is not known.
The sister of Tyrone Deloney, who did not want to give her name, describes what her nieces witnessed inside the apartment.
"He (the suspect) had the girls in the bathroom, and he was sitting down with a gun on my niece hitting her. That's when my brother came in to grab my niece and that's how he got shot," the sister said while fighting back tears.
"I can't imagine what he went through going in there trying to defend his family. That's one thing, especially with his nieces and nephew," Emmanuel Gonzalez, a family relative, said.
Shaken up neighbors pitched in to help by moving the family's two large huskies into a next door apartment.
"Everybody got to be careful. Protect your family, your loved ones. Obviously, keep your doors locked. You never know when this could happen," Eric Foster, a resident in the apartment complex, said.
Fredrick Wesley has a long wrap sheet of cases in San Joaquin County. Felony cases online include receiving known stolen property in 2010, a sex charge and inflicting corporal injury on a spouse/cohabitant in 2020, drug possession in 2011 and 2013, and a prohibited person owning or possessing a gun, also in 2013.
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