September 5, 2025 • 64 mins
In this moving podcast episode, Christine Samuels shares her journey of love, loss, and resilience following the tragic death of her husband, Justin, in 2019. She recounts their cross-cultural romance, the blending of their families, and the traditions they built together. Christine reflects on the night of Justin’s passing, the vital support of advocates and community, and her ongoing work honoring Justin’s legacy through a memorial scholarship fund. The conversation highlights the enduring power of love, the strength found in community, and the importance of remembering a life well-lived.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
I'm glad to have Christine Samuel's on today. I know
she's meant a lot to my wife, and I think
they meant a lot to each other. Yes, you have
an amazing story to tell. You were married to an
amazing man and he had a really he had a
big heart. You were telling me about him earlier. I
just would like to give you an opportunity to just
(00:27):
kind of talk about the things that how you met
Justin and all the things that you experienced all the
way up until the time of his death in twenty nineteen,
and then just talk about where you went from there.
But like, let's start with just your story about your y'alls,
the love story of the New Jersey and the country boy,
(00:48):
the loaf of white Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
The big old country loaf of white bread. I moved
down to Virginia from New Jersey in two thousand five, Yeah,
two thousand and five, and I had worked in the
court system in New Jersey. Prior to that, I worked
for two attorneys. So I was looking basically from Amherst
(01:15):
to Richmond area, going back into the court system. Cool,
and then my mother said to me, she was retired.
She said, you know, can you just take six months
and help me get accuimated to the area. She's never
very comfortable driving anywhere or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
So I said sure.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So when spring came around, I was like, you know,
we need things. It was a new build the house.
We needed some trees, we needed you know, lawn things
because now we have an acre and a half.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
We're in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
We just had our little one hundred bye hundred lot,
you know. So I was like, I'm going to go
to Low's. I had worked retail prior, and I was like,
I'm going to go to Low's, get that discount and
my friend day there, I met Olga Dawson and we
started talking and that was, you know, my first friend
(02:09):
really that I had made. I knew people down here,
but more in the Farnville area. So she and I
became friends, and she started inviting me over on Sundays
for dinner, like cook together. She's Mexican, I'm Italian. We
like to cook and Nascar, and I'm not a fan
(02:32):
of NASCAR in the least little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
So it was always like, seriously, the race would.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Come on and I'd like take a nap, but she
was doing it because her husband's best friend Justin was there.
He would come over every Sunday for dinner and to
watch the race. And that was why it took that
man a while to get up the nerve to talk
to me.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
To not you seem so approachable with that jersey accident
and everything.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
I think that's exactly it. He was like, you know,
he did.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
He said, He's like, I've got perfection here. I don't
want to mess this up. If I'm just watched or
just like the race, I'll be okay.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yes, So it took him a good while to get
up the nerve, about eight months or so to get
up the nerve to.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's almost a whole season of races.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Nightmare, nightmare.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
But you know nothing that my mom loves NASCAR now
because my husband. But but I don't.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I never, I never did.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I like, you know, football, baseball, and hockey. So yeah,
I'm a little more aggressive than my husband.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
But when he finally got up the nerve to ask
me if I wanted to hang out, I was like,
you know, sure, And it was kind of awkward our
first little meet up, and then I didn't hear from
him for like a few days. So then he called
me to tell me that something had happened with his mom.
(04:03):
And we were talking and he was like, do you
want to, you know, have dinner? And I was like, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
So he actually cooked for me. Oh cool, he cooked
for me.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
I went to his house and he cooked for me
and made this amazing dinner. And I was like, damn this,
this man can cook too.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
But that was one of his things.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
He had to make sure that I could cook before
he asked me, you know. So he was too busy
with the races to realize that I had been helping
prepare meals this whole time. But yeah, and he told
me that he was sorry he didn't call me right away,
but he was nervous. I made him nervous and no
(04:46):
one has ever made him nervous before, and he wasn't
used to being around another alpha type personality.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So I said, okay, I can definitely relate.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yes, I think you absolutely can. I think you absolutely can.
And we have been described as what happens when an
unstoppable force him meets an immovable object me, or when
a tornado meets a volcanout. So that is you know,
(05:15):
the two of us, and that's how we were and
we started really dating. You know, quickly things got very
involved where everybody said it wasn't going to happen quickly.
I was going to realize that hunting was more important
to him because it was General Farms.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
The two weeks at General Farms.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And so everybody was surprised when after hunting season or
dooring hunting season, I should say I was there because
excuse me. He had never set time aside during hunting
season for anyone or anything else. And I got in
I love you.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
He told me he loved me first, not even two
weeks into it, and that was like smack dab in
the middle of hunting season. Yeah, so everybody knew it
was different. Everybody knew like, okay, this is different. And
we moved in together. I moved in with him pretty quickly.
(06:20):
He had started talking about marriage, and I said, there's
no discussion until you meet my family in New Jersey.
But one of the one I'll back up a little bit.
When he told me he loved me, I was like,
you need to know like a couple of things. One
my mother will eventually be living with us, and two
(06:41):
I can't have children, nor do I want them. And
he was like, I don't want them. I don't want them.
He is number two of seven boys, and you know,
he was very involved with his brother's lives and he's like,
I'm good with us being the awesome aunt and uncle.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And I was like perfect, perfect, because that's what I
liked to.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
He was also a no dogs in the house type
of person until I came along and we got my
Jack Russell Eva and uh do though no, But then
we got my Akita pitbull mix and he was in
the house that was gunther, so he quickly The only
(07:27):
rule he had was they could not sleep in the bed,
our bed. They could sleep in any other bed, they
could be on the furniture that he just didn't want
them in the bed.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
My cat, on the other hand, she slept right next
to him, and that was that she would walk across
me to get to him. But ye, yes, so you
know that was that was the deal, and we were
we were both good with that. He met my family
in New Jersey and was kind of taken aback because
(07:57):
my mom is very, uh the opposite of me, and
my family in New Jersey is more like me.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
You know. My mom was just always she still is.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
She's well, she's sobbed. She will cut you, like verbally.
But you know, she's very much a lady. She's very
much not like me and my aunt, her sister, my
Ane Joan, who I love dearly. It was wild. You know,
she's ten years younger.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Than my mom. She's a hippie.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yes, they smoked her weed twenty four to seven and
he was like, oh, that she is nothing like your mom.
I was like, I told you, I told you, you know.
So it was funny when we got married because our
families are so different.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So where did you get married?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
We got married, which is it's now my brother in
law Gerald and my sister in law Britney's farm. It
was Ed and his wife, Ed Dawson, Keith's father Keith
and Olga, her father.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
In law's products.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
So it was down you're in.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Virginia, Yeah, it was. It was It was an amherst
Off sixty West, Okay.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
And so he didn't make the track back to New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
No, I didn't want when he So when he met.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Your family, did he did y'all go to New Jersey?
Did they all come?
Speaker 3 (09:12):
He went to New Jersey?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
What did that discussion on the way back from New Jersey,
sound like he was.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
You know one. That was the first time he ever
saw my road rage. Okay, that was the first time,
because I don't know, that's not.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
A thing for people from the north right New Jersey,
not at all.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
We're very meek and mild, and we don't scream at
anybody when we're driving.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, we're so you got to see some road rack,
he got.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
You got my full effect road rage to where I'm
I'm driving because I drove everywhere.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I have control issues, okay, and.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I'm driving and I'm hanging out the window like screaming
at this woman who swaw the sign for fifteen miles
that she was going to have to merge and decided.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Not to until get to the front of your car.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And yeah, until I made her hit the big orange thing,
until I made her.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That's I mean, that's some active road rage.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah. I was a moving exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I could not get to the right. I could not
get to the right. I was in you know, it's
and I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I was.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
She decided to not follow the science. I decided to
enforce the rules.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
All right, So anything else that you remember about your
discussion on the way back, He was.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I think he was surprised that it wasn't so city
because I am from most people would refer to it
as South Jersey except for the people who live there.
It's more like central. Most people say there is no
Central Jersey. But there's like north, and then there's like
(10:46):
South and like west like so, so.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It's not necessarily a city field. It's it's just or
is it a city field.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
There's a lot of people. There's a lot of people, but.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
It's not like a huge sprawling area like that where
I was from in Ocean County, in Little leg at
the southern part of the state.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
So you just north of Ocean City, Maryland then right, Or.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Is it Ocean No, north of Ocean City, New Jersey, yes, yes?
Or north of Ocean City, New Jersey. Yes, that's like
that's to me, that's real South Jersey.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
But he he was surprised. He was surprised that.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
When we came in through you know, crossover from Delaware
and we came through Hamilton, the amount of farms, like
he was, he was surprised at that. He was really
surprised at how bad the roads suck, how bad the
potholes are. He was like, do they not work. I
was like, no, they do, they just don't, you know,
work on some of them. I don't know, but he was.
(11:52):
I think at first he was overwhelmed by my family
because while he and his family, our loud bunch were
loud differently. I have had people say I do things aggressively,
like I walk aggressively, I talk aggressively. Well, my brother
(12:12):
was that way. And he only got to meet my
one brother because my other brother lived in Colorado. But
he met my aunt you know, and my aunt, my cousin, yes,
my cousins, and he was surprised at how short I
actually am because the rest of my family is tall.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I'm I'm not tall at all.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I had to wear shoes I had a little bit
of a heal in them so I could reach the
floor today. So how to do that because I've seen
the you know, I've seen the video clips. I've seen
the videos where and I'm like, I'm not going to
be able to reach the floor. But anyway, yes, because
because of the shoes. But he was, I think he
was surprised. I think he expected it to be more
(12:54):
more city or just more urban, you know, more of
an urban feel where it has the area that I
was from had more small town feel, and then my
brother was a little further north in Ocean County, which
was Point Pleasant, and you know that was that's the
beaches right there, that's you know which we're all.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It's all so on the East Coast. Who do you
think has the best seafood. It's a tough seafood.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
I love seafood.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I grew up Literally, you're driving and there's somebody under
a bridge that just caught things, and that's where you
get your seafood.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
So I can't.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Favorite favorite seafood dish. Is it with an Italian twist?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Of course?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Of course it would have to be a chilpino or
fra diablo. It's just a spicier like the chiopino is
more of like a stew. It's got different types of
it's got muscles, clams, shrimp, you can throw other stuff
(14:02):
in there. I don't eat mussels or oysters. That I
do not do, but blue crabs are superior their taste.
It's just a lot of work to get things out
of It's a lot of work for a little bit
of meat, but it's the taste is so much better.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I can't be this far inland and think, oh this
is good seafood.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I just I can't. But or fra diabo, which is
a spicy marinara sauce with shrimp or crab or you
know whatever. We meet my family and I don't know
how Italian like, I know other Italian families do it,
but we do a crab sauce. It's we cook in spaghetti.
(14:49):
We call it gravy, but we cooked, you know, a
crab gravy. The crabs are cooked in there. It's a
little spicier, and it's just that's that's my favorite. My
mom's pasta, my mom's is my favorite of that. But yeah, okay,
that's my favorite.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So y'all get married. What year did y'all get married?
Speaker 2 (15:08):
We got married in twenty ten. We had been together
for a little over three years at that point.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Okay, yeah, all right, yeah, so you have this amazing wedding.
So what were you doing at the time? What were
you doing or do you have any really funny stories
from I mean, I think everybody has their own marriage
story of like the day that you got married. When
Aver and I got married, one of our kids came
up up to us and while we were doing our
dance and tried to hand us a fork to eat
eat a piece of cake, and I was like, well,
(15:35):
it's an informal thing. So it was. It was a
special time. So anything that you think about with your
marriage that you were like, man, this is this is
something I remember.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
We So first of all, we had this huge tent
I kept my one of my best friends kept calling
it the fairytale tent because there's this huge, white, you know,
tent and it's set up in the middle of the
woods where you couldn't even see it from you know,
anywhere else, and it was this perfect spot. And my
brothers in law came up with this genius idea to
(16:10):
enclose the generators with bales of hay. So it quieted them.
It did, It didn't They didn't know. You didn't hear
any of the generators running because we had I think
like five or six generators running. Because we had the
food that me and justin well, me, my mom, Olga,
my brother in law Johnny, we cooked all of the
(16:33):
food for our wedding.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
And our wedding was you know, the Jersey Shore meets
the Holler, and our food was the Jersey.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
You have that on your napkins.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
We should We absolutely should have because we had the
country folk fist pumping and the Jersey folk flat foot
and like it was.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
It was a it was a merge of culture.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
It was my aunt. My aunt got into.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The sounds, like everybody pretty much embraced me.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
We had.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yes, we had an amazing time and people talked about
the food. People still talk about the food. And it
was literally Italian meets, like I had my Italian dishes
and then we had our.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
You know, country dishes. We had stuff for the kids,
like you know, we we did everything.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
But that I think that's one of the coolest things
about a marriage and people coming together like that is
that like if you meet that happy like merge, it's
just it's just phenomenal. And I think that's just like
y'all what you and the two of y'all had built
that brought all that together, and it's just I think
that's pretty much how your life was after.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yes, it was, Yes, it was.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
You know, a mixture like that man taught me how
to drive a dump truck that had a sixteen foot
bed on it and dump a load of sixteen foot
you know, logs trees when we were logging. Taught me
how to operate a Cat nine fifty five L with
a four yard bucket or a three yard three yard bucket,
(18:04):
and you know, so they were the things that we did.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Did you have any road rage with that?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Nope, you can't get road range on because you are
not moving fast enough to do anything anybody. Like when
he first told me, he's like, I'm going to teach
you how to operate it. I'm like, where's a fucking
steering wheel and he's like, nope, it's off. But and
I was like, what all right?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I didn't I couldn't reach No, because the seat didn't
move up, and I had he had to put like
something behind me so that I could I could operate
the thing. I had to like slide forward. Yeah, same thing. Well, no,
the dump truck.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I can say this because I think we're beyond the
statue limitations, but I do believe that we were supposed
to have our CDL to operate the dump truck because
of the air brakes. And I'm not a feather the
brake type of person. And you were coming out of
bailey sawmill or belly sawmill. But yeah, that was the
(19:04):
sawmill back there, and you know, coming on to sixty
and he's like, all right, bib, just you know, inch forward,
just inch forward. So I'm like okay, and I look
and he's like, babe, easy on the brakes and he's
like kissing the windshield and he's like on the windshield.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
I was like, oops, okay, we got it.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
But yeah, our that's our wedding was you know, when
worlds collide. We were when world's collide, you know, and
it was that way. Was so many different things like
what was tradition for him versus what was tradition for us?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
And you know what became our tradition.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
So talk real quick about some of the traditions that
you had. I mean, I feel like you have like
a really rich culture on both sides. What does that
look like when families get together for holidays and things.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Like, oh gosh, holidays.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
So Justin wasn't huge on holidays when we first started dating, okay,
but he quickly wanted to.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Do this every year. Wanted to have a tradition.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So we do what we call the sam fam Christmas.
That is usually a couple of weeks prior to Christmas,
and that's only that way now because everybody started having kids.
Prior to we would do it pretty much right around
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, whatever it was. But you have
(20:29):
to understand that when we are all together, just the
immediate Samuel's family and the Dawson's, it's thirty people. Okay,
it's there. I always say we were, and nobody might
get this reference, but we roll deeper than Wu Tang
in ninety two because we we go deep. You know,
(20:52):
there's a lot of us I can remember, like, gosh, somebody.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
They would never probably put you together unless you are
talking to this exactly, like you know, the Jersey Yes,
and the white bread and.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
The white breads, the country the country folk. But and Olga.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Olga is Mexican from California, So yes.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
I thought she'd be Russian or something.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Everybody always says that Olga is actually a very traditional
Hispanic name.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Very common.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
She was named after her aunt, so yeah, and that's
another thing I say aunt. I don't say aunt. It's
an aunt step one.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
I don't know what an aunt is. But yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
We the same what is it called sam.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
The sam Fam Christmas and our our group chat is
a sam Fam group chat. But we get together and
it's gotten so big that you know, at first we
would do it at my house where I am now
mine in my mom's house, and we would do it there.
(21:57):
But then people started having kids and then it's a
and so now we've definitely outgrown that space. But we
have it at Keith and Olga's garage, which is huge.
It is huge, so we have many a party in there.
We break out the tables and the chairs, we set
everything up. You know, we can run exactly, they can
(22:19):
run around the property up most of the time because
there's a shooting range, so most of the time people
are shooting. Like well, that's kind of calmed down. But
but yeah, so it's been seventeen years of tradition, you know,
doing this, and we will pick a name. You know,
(22:47):
it used to be well, we used to pick a name,
and then when the kids started coming, we're like, oh,
we're just buying for the kids. And then we started
doing dirty Sanna. So some of the gifts are amazing.
Some of the gifts, you know, the guys picked him out.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
The guys came out.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Now you know, it's a case of beer, it's a
bottle of jack, it's you know, very very obvious things.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Some don't even wrap. Sometimes they're just in the food
line bag or Walmart bag. Yeah, for the bag.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
So you have all the Christmas traditions.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, we have that and Thanksgiving Thanksgiving too.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So one of one of the traditions, and I know
this is not the best part, but like one of
the traditions that you have, is the tradition that you
had of like opening.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Day, Yeah, opening day has Opening day of general firearms
has always.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
That's pretty cool because he also told you he loved you,
doesn't Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So that hunting season while as a wife, oh my god,
it can send us to the edge because they forget you,
forget they're married, they forget that. They say this, I'm
going to pick somebody. I'm going to pick him up,
which means I'm going to have to drop him off
at wherever they're starting at five o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Like it's frustrating.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
But the guys, the majority of them, would take the
full two weeks and that was that one year.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
One year sent them all to my brother in law, Joseph's.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I cooked a week and a half's worth of food
for all of them, and I was like, I don't
have to worry about it. Now, I don't have to
worry about it. You just seriously call me if you're
in a bind because you can't get somewhere. Because they
love to do you know, drink during during hunt and
season and you know, yeah, at the end of the
day they drink their beers, tell their stories.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
And but opening.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, yeah, but Opening day has evolved into an oyster
roast because usually Trinity Church how their oyster ros the
week before or you know, somewhere right around there, and
it's good oysters.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I don't eat snot, so I can't tell you exactly
what it's about.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
But you've heard stores.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, they they enjoy there. You know, I'll go there.
I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I don't, but he would go to the oyster ros.
Justin would go to the oyster ROAs every every year
or two at Trinity. But they do this thing, you know,
when they have their opening drive and they hunt throughout
the day. They have a system. The system is they
have a deer locker over at my brother in law,
Gerald's where they hang the deer and that's where they'll
(25:41):
skin and you know, quarter them up.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Then they move it.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
To Keith in Olgle's house where he has in the
garage autopsy tables basically you know, steing the steel or
steal whatever. They are tables that can get hosed and
bleached down, and they process all the deer. They make jerky,
they make summer sausage, they make I mean, it's you know,
it's two weeks of them doing this. It's two weeks.
(26:09):
And you don't have to get a deer to get meat.
If you help process, you get meat. I don't eat
deer meat anymore. When me and Justin were poor, when
we were poor, that's how we referred to it all
the time. When we were poor, we ate a lot
of deer meat, and I made a lot of bread
and pasta. He loves deer meat and decided he didn't
(26:30):
want to eat more any more bread and pasta. I decided,
I hate deer meat, didn't want to eat any more
of it, and I'll keep the bread and pasta.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
So that was, Yeah, we were It's an acquired taste, definitely.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, you don't acquire you don't have so yeah, my
I so talk a little bit. I know, it's not
the it's not definitely, it was a life chasing day.
Talk about opening Day twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
So three days prior, my neighbor was out front and
he was crying, or two days but I don't remember.
Two or three days prior, and Justin was getting ready
to go to work and he was like came around.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
He was like, what's the matter.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
And Carson, my neighbor, he was eighteen at the time,
said that his best friend had killed himself and he
just needed a hug, and Justin game a hug. Justin
was like a father to him. He was very much
a father figure to him. Carson had the code to
(27:39):
our house like on our on our keypad. Justin taught
him how to drive. Justin taught him how to do
a lot of things, yeah, how he should carry himself
in public, how to speak to people. At this point,
(28:01):
we had kind of pulled back a little bit from
Carson because he was disrespectful. He was super disrespectful, and
he had his issues, and I don't know the full
extent because I wasn't told about his issues.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
In depth.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I wasn't told how bad they really were. I wasn't
told anything about that. But anytime his mother reached out
to me asking if Justin could reach out to Carson.
I made it happen, and Justin always willingly did it
because he genuinely liked the kid and wanted to see
(28:41):
the kid succeed. So his mother had reached out to me,
and I reached out to Hansom, and Handsome was like,
you know, no problem taking care of already talked to
him anyway.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
We're saying handsome is just.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Yes, sorry, handsome. He is.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
My license plate says handsome. I have always referred to
him as handsome.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
He's my handsome.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
I thought you'd have white bread or something.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
No, he's my handsome, my bubby, my beautiful boy. But
handsome was the most common, most common.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
So you have a troubled neighbor and your cousin's reaching
out trying to help them. Yes, and then it wasn't
like just one day of that.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
No, it was years. It was years of it. It
was years of it. Apparently Carson didn't make it. They
were I think by the time Justin got in touch
with them, they were doing their last drive over at
Ed's which is now my brother in law Gerald's, and
he didn't He didn't hunt with them that day, but
(29:48):
went back to Keith and Olga's to be with everybody
and yes, the oyster roast, and I I was getting
I still to this day, don't know exactly what was
going on there. I was getting different things. I have
(30:11):
his mother texting me telling me that he's just been
so upset, and then I have my sister in law
saying he's a mess. If Olga's saying he's a mess,
I'm thinking, you know, he's crying, he's doing all these things.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
And I'm like.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Being a bitch to everybody because I'm like, please just
understand that this kid just lost his friend. You know,
I'm being very protective, but not you know, I'm just
going by text. I'm not I don't have videos. I'm
not there. I don't know what's going on. And then
Olga had texted me and was like, he's going to
have to leave and I said it's that She was like,
he's being extremely disrespectful. So I said okay, and I
(30:52):
texted Justin and I said, you know, please just make
it home safe, and he said I will.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
And they got home.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
They pulled in my driveway. Justin had Carson with him.
Carson had driven there, but Justin and Carson with him,
because apparently the kid was messed up. Whether it's drugs
are alcohol, I don't know. And Brew had pulled in
behind him. Yeah yeah, Brew norkonk and Bruce one of
(31:22):
those you know brothers that isn't isn't biological. And apparently
what had happened while they were at Keith and Olga's
is Carson kept going to his car and at one
point he took a backpack out or had his backpack
and a handgun fell out. Justin scooped it up, gave
(31:46):
it to Brew said hey, can you hold on to this?
And Bruce said, no problem. So Brew followed Justin home
because there was some concern about getting him in the house,
you know, things like that. I was out side decorating
for Christmas. They were talking normally about ten minutes in
(32:07):
the driveway, and I could tell Justin was tired because
he wasn't saying much of anything. But you know, they
were just kind of laughing and talking. Nothing was going
on at this point. I do believe his mother had
come out and they were still in my driveway. Our
(32:29):
driveways are literally like my property goes right to theirs.
And I heard Bruce say, well, Justin said all right,
we gotta wrap this up. I'm going to bed. We're
done for the night. I've been up since you know,
whatever morning, whatever time. And Bruce said, oh, we got
(32:53):
one more thing, one more piece of business to handle.
And he said to Carson, do mind if I hold
on to this gun just for tonight. You're not in
your right mind. No, he didn't say, you're not around mind.
I don't want you to hurt yourself or somebody else,
like just yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
It was like a switch was flipped.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Carson started screaming about MS thirteen and there's bodies on
that gun.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Like he went from the country boy to like like
a street right.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
It's like thinking he's like got street cred and he's
you know, part of a gang, and just telling him
he's going to kill them all this shit and going
on and on and on, and I'm losing it. I'm
like I started recording and I start walking over there,
and it had gotten quiet.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Well, Carson was screaming, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
And then I heard the door close as I'm like
right there and because they had moved over into Carson's
driveway at this point, and I lost it. I was like,
I'm calling the fucking cops. I'm done with this shit.
I'm sick of living next to this, I'm sick of
(34:10):
this kid and all of this shit.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
I'm calling the cops.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
And I walked back up and I was on the
porch and Justin was like, bebe babe.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
He came running over. He said, babe, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
He went in the house, don't call the cops. Like
he went in the house like it's done, It's over with.
And I was like, all right, but if he comes
out of that fucking house, I'm calling the cops. And
I had gone back inside for maybe five six minutes.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
And I came.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Outside and I was finishing doing up some decorations on
the porch and I started walking over there because it
was just Justin brew and Carson's mother, and I started
walking over there, and I heard the front door open
to Carson's house and I heard him come down the steps.
(35:01):
But he wasn't yelling, he wasn't nothing. He was completely calm.
And I could hear him walking on the sidewalk as
I'm walking on my sidewalk, and he said, you want
to see what I'll do. And it was immediate gunshots,
(35:25):
two to three shots, a tiny, tiny pause, and then
two to three.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Shots more then you that's when you started inside. Correct.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I turned. I was dialing nine one one as I
was running up the steps, and I'm screaming up my
mom he shot them, he shot them. And she's like,
I don't think it was comprehending. She's like, Chris, do
you know that for sure? Like what's going on? And
I was like, he shot them? And I'm on.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
With dispatch and I'm at in my laundry room and
I had to open the window because that looks out
right over.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
What time of days is It's only nine o four people,
so it's dark. It's dark outside, so you really can't
see a lot of anything.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
No, And it was so dark that night.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
And you're and we're not talking about like a city street.
We're talking about like, no, there's no lights. Yeah, there's
there's no lights, just a little light of whatever's coming out.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yes, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
So you're on the phone with nine on one, You're
and all the emotions and everything that are going through
your mind and everything else.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Screaming for justin No, screaming for him because in my
heart I knew he was gone, because he would have
the first thing he would have done was yelled out
to me to get in the house. I'm okay, don't worry.
(37:04):
And he wasn't saying anything right, and I just kept
screaming and I didn't hear anything from Brew, and then
I heard moaning moaning, and Dispatch kept asking me Justin's
name and what happened?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
And I'm losing it, Like I've spelled his name, I've
said his name, I've said my like eight times, like.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Please just see somebody.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yes, But now I understand that Carson had called nam
on one twice while I was on the phone, and
I part of me thinks there might have been another
I don't know, but I hear Brew moaning, and I'm like, Brew,
(37:47):
what is going on? He's like, I don't know. I said,
do you know if Hansom's all right? He said, I
don't know Alpha.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
I don't know Alpha's.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
We know who Alph is.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
And uh, he said it's bad and he was talking
about himself.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Oh Brew. Brew had called nine one one.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Also, yes, he drug himself because he had I think
at least two shots center like abdomen, and he drug himself.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
We're not talking about like your average heart. I mean,
this is a marine.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
He's a marine. Yeah, and Justina's army, you know, their
military there.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
So they know what's They knew what was going on.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
And Brew had drug himself and climbed up into his
truck to get his phone so that he could call
nine one too, and he was like. He asked me,
did you call? And I said, I'm on the phone
with them now. He said, are they coming? I said,
they're coming, Brew, They're coming. And I'm not hearing from
(39:01):
Justin and.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You're still inside. You're just yelling at the one, I guess.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
And at first Despatch asked me if I could go
outside to look, and I said, he was shooting.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
He was still out. I could hear yelling at first,
you know that he was still outside and I didn't.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I didn't. I didn't get shot, but I just wanted
to get to Justin. And I went outside. She said
they should be there any minute. And I went outside
and I was yelling for Justin. But I'm tending to Brew.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Because you're at his truck right and at this point,
you don't know where you don't know where Carson is.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
No, I didn't know where him or his mother were.
I knew she was alive because I could hear her screaming,
but I had my phone in my hand. And the
police pulled up and it was so dark that night,
(40:11):
and they get it. There were two different cars and
they get out of their car and I hear them
like I'm talking. I'm like, it's next door, it's next door.
And then I hear them like put your hands up,
and I'm like, shit, my phone is in my hand,
like I didn't even you know what I mean, Like
it's so dark, and I just like tossed my phone
(40:32):
and I'm like, he's next door. He shot them, And
I'm like, I don't know where my husband is.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
And I remember.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Paramedics wouldn't look at me. None of the officers, unseene
would look at me every time I asked about my husband,
like I don't know who who your husband is. And
I'm like the other person that got shot, Like, please
(41:18):
tell me what's going on, Please just tell me?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Is he dead? Is he okay? Please just tell me.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Because this is several minutes later, you still don't know.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
And I remember one of the officers coming in the
house with me, and I was so freaking embarrassed because
I had dishes in the sink.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
It's crazy what you remember. I was so.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Embarrassed because I was like, oh my god, the dishes.
I need to do the dishes.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
And then I'm worried about the officer. I'm like, can
I please get you some water? Like do you need
and he's like no, no, Like I'm filling up water
for him and he's like, how about you drink the water?
And I'm like, but do you need it?
Speaker 2 (42:00):
You know?
Speaker 3 (42:01):
And it wasn't registering that he was gone.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
You just didn't want to know. You just didn't want,
you want to do anything, you wanted anything, but to
know that, I mean, you knew in my heart.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
I knew because he the first thing he would have
said is I'm okay staying in the house.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
And it was just reinforced by what everybody else is doing.
And so you're already transitioning, trying to help other people
figure it out.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
And by this time, oh, if my family starts showing up,
you know, they you need somebody to you need a
family to assemble.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
They are the ones.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
They're all mills and the white bread was gone.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Okay, Keith and Olga well Olga was on the phone
with my mom when the shooting happened. Keith and Olga,
Jonathan which is Justin's brother, Joseph, Justin's brother, Jake, Jarrell,
(43:09):
and Brittany, which all all of the boys. There's seven boys.
They all have the same initials, so it's they're all
j names, same middle initial. Josh got there, and Josh
got there fast and he lives in Slevannah.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Probably a lot faster than the cops should have got there. Right,
you're saying, how do you? How does how does family?
It is? It is so fast, it's crazy when you.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
But I just remember, like I know people were there,
and I know sometime had passed, But then I was like,
Josh is here, Like that's like that's freaking fast.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Like he's a firefighter with citysh.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
He knows, he knows how to drive. So they're transitioning
at that point, Ye take care to take care of you.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I get like I was Mary and Jimmy, Alan were there,
my friends, Lindsay's so many people and I remember and
(44:15):
I think at the time he was a major. Elliott
kept trying me to get me to write my statement,
and I'm not like I'm trying, but at this point,
nobody has said to me that Justin was dead or alive.
(44:36):
And I knew, but I needed to hear. I needed
to hear that he was gone. And I said to Elliott,
is he God? Is he?
Speaker 3 (44:56):
And he said yes? And I went about other men
threw up.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Those are like some of the most difficult I'm not
making excuse me or anything that we did, but those
are such difficult things because we want I always think
about military families and I remember talk. I remember reading
one of the guys that had to come back and
tell a wife, a spouse that one of his teammates
(45:30):
had been killed in Afghanistan, and he said he was
looking and he saw the decorations, and he's like, I
just wanted these kids to have this family, to have
just two or three more minutes of peace. And I
think sometimes we forget, like you already know, yeah, you
already you know as the spouse, you already know, you've
(45:51):
already you have that connection, you already know, and maybe
it's better for us just to like give you. And
it's just I.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Also understand too, from the standpoint of the police, that
you're still trying to uncover what happened, and you need
real reactions, not.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Script that you need, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Like I mean, I think one of the things I've
heard repeatedly from my wife about you is just how
understanding you are and how you always seem to give
people the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
And I do.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
But but I also think that like the other side
of that is in law enforcement, just hearing your story, man,
We've got to do better, We really do, because like
y'all know, you knew, you knew, you knew after that
first few gunshots, like you know, yeah, you knew it
was gone. And I you know, I think one of
(46:51):
the things that I think is the most difficult in
our profession is to see people like you and think
we can do better. And I don't want to leave
it there because I think one of the greatest things
about your story is how you honored the life that
Justin lived and so talk a little bit about like
(47:15):
that was such a dark place, It was a dark
knight for you, and.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Even these the clearest memories, And I feel bad badly,
but I can't see Klay Thompson without thinking about that,
(47:41):
you know, because he was there until he was taken away.
And he gave me his wallet. And on the flip side,
Amber came in at the same time. But I don't
know if it was that damn snowsuit she was wearing,
but she was cool. So she came in her little
(48:01):
snowsuit and I just thought, Oh my god, she's so
freaking adorable.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Look at her like that was my first.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Don't ever call her adorable. I called her adorable one
time in court. Oh she lost it, she lost her mind.
She's like, I'm not adorable. I am fierce.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
She is fierce, and she's adorable. She's just like me.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Maybe that's what it is. Her feet wouldn't reach Florida.
So talk a little bit about that. Talk a little
bit about being a victim and of a violent crime
and how big of a role an advocate plays in
that for you.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Full disclosure, I don't remember my first advocate's name.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
I'm saying, just an advocate on your behalf, on my behalf,
because I feel like I feel like between you and Amber,
y'all established this connection early on, and she was your advocate.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
She was my advocate, she was champion. She's my first advocate. Sucked,
my first assigned advocate. I don't remember her. She's not
there anymore. But Amber was immediately. I don't know if
it's because we do have similar personalities. I don't know
if it's because we both have you know.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
You're both alphas. Yeah, you're both alphas.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
We can detect bullshit really quick, you know we have that,
And I immediately felt safe with her.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
You know why I think it is is all those reasons,
But I also think it's because she does this job
for the right reason.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
She does, she absolutely does.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
And she saw you in your worst time and she
was like, that's who I'm that's who I'm gravitating to,
and I'm going to take care of her.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
That woman.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Let me tell you, I can't tell you the amount
of emails back and forth that and she would answer
each and every question, even if it was asked forty
times prior. She would answer it when it came time.
She told me repeatedly, repeatedly, I will give information to
whoever you allow me to. Somebody comes in here asking
(50:06):
for information. I don't care if they're family. They don't
automatically get that information. That's you're the value.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
You own that information.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
You're allowed to tell who.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
You want me to I will tell them as much
or as little or nothing, whatever it is. And she
drove that point home with me.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
She lives, she lived it, She lived it with you
because she would get asked her as little as she is,
she will, she fights, she is.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
She is a fighter and I love that.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
And so when I'm like, Okay, the family wants to
come in to ask you some questions, to go over
some things, is that okay.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
That's the first time I met y'all.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, And she was like, yeah, but we have to
meet over in the sheriff's apartment because there's not enough room.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
We did the courthouse though, didn't we didn't we do
it in the courthouse.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
No, that was the second one. That was That was
the second or third one. Yeah, you know theirs. We
were down in the basement of the Yeah, and I
broke the chain thing going down the steps.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Oh, the plastic one.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah, it's not because as I did was go like that,
and I was like, well, good fuck, No, I just
tried some some property at the sheriff's apartment.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
Okay, that's the least. That's the least. That's the least
they could do. We're public service.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
So but she always always answered, you know, to all
of us, she very much put herself out there and
made herself available and lyle too towards Amber was our
my poor number one contact, you know she was. And
(51:46):
I am proud to call Amber a friend now, you
know what I mean, Like when I see her daughter
walking through the hallway at school and like songs nobody's
messing with there were good, you know.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
And you don't know how much we appreciate. And so
having an advocate like that and seeing someone be there
for you, how does that? How does that feel now
to be that for other people, like in the schools
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
I have met with several students already and I've gone
like into classrooms and I have told them flat out,
if you cannot be your own advocate, you are unsure
about speaking up about something, I'll be that auntie. I
(52:35):
will be that person who will speak up for you.
I am going to you know, my job is to
like per my you know, my job the company I
work for is to help students and their parents with FAFSA,
which is the Free Application for Federal Student Loan Scholarship searches,
(53:00):
comparing their aid offers, like helping them in that area
I am also in a situation where I can help.
In my position, I can help students who have unusual
circumstances who maybe do not live with a parent, who
are in foster, who are not documented, or their parents
(53:28):
aren't documented, many different things where it's not a traditional
two parent or mind two parents, but one parent. You
know if they don't because until you're twenty four, you
have to go in the FAFSA, like a parent has
to go in the FAFSA. That's your contributor. A lot
of kids don't have it. Their parents are incarcerated or
(53:51):
addicted or whatever.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
So I'm not engaged.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
Yeah, they're just not engaged at all.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
And so it's like for me, it has to feel
really good to be over, Like I will be your voice.
I know what it's like to not have a voice,
and I had somebody give me my voice back. Yes,
and so how does that feel?
Speaker 3 (54:12):
It feels really good.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Like one of the things we do as a family,
the guys, which I had told you a little about earlier,
but the guys every hunting season take up a fund
and it goes to families in the Amherst area who
are in need at Christmas time. So that they can
have a good Christmas so that their bills can be paid.
(54:35):
Last year, five families got a thousand dollars each.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
Last year. Also, Beth, who's home burned down, she got
a good chunk.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Of How crazy is that that somebody that worked at
the Sheriff's office, a victim of a violent crime, started
a nonprofit, yes, scholarship fund, and that money went to them.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
All of the Samuels boys and brew called best Mom, Mama, Hunt,
She's They're all family. So when this happened at that time,
when we have been taking up money, they were like, well,
we're directing, you know, some of that's going to bath
and then the rest will go. And Beth at first
she was like, no, I don't and they're like, no.
Speaker 3 (55:18):
She's she's such a good family. All of them are
so amazed. Hard work and white bread yes, yes, cheese country, yes.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
I mean she could live. She could live on the land, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
All of them, her and her brothers, all the majority
of my Samuel's family can live off the land. Yes,
they can all do it.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
I just cook.
Speaker 3 (55:43):
I'll just can yell at people when they need it.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
So, but what's the name of it? So just so
we can, because that's one of the cool things about
what we do is we can actually push that information
out there. So we'll get I don't know if you
have a link or whatever, but well, but what we
will do is we'll definitely put it out there and
just and put out like so, what's the name of
the the.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
Scholarship is the justin A. Samuel's Memorial Scholarship Fund, Okay,
and so and then the guys take up their own fund.
It they just call it the Christmas Fund. That is
basically has been just them raising that money. Those amounts.
The people they hunt with, people they know, things like that.
(56:28):
Even the scholarship last year, I was able to give
five students five hundred dollars each. So I raised twenty
five hundred dollars. One was to Spike hunt best nephew
because I put it to the family. I said, look,
Spike is graduating this year. This kid has worked hard, hard,
and I know he'll have you know, he may not
(56:49):
be in a lower tax bracket like some of the
other students, but he's still going to have cost and
you know, he's going you know, big animal event like
he's he's doing the things and I know and I know,
(57:09):
I know, damn well, if Justin were alive, he would.
Speaker 1 (57:13):
Make them support something local.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
So you know, that is what happened. And all of
the money we raised will go to students at AMers
County High School. All the money that's raised through the
Guys for Christmas will go to AMers County families. If
we get bigger, if we hit that nonprofit status, we
(57:35):
will probably expand to Nelson because Justin love Nelson County too.
Speaker 3 (57:41):
I don't know if we would go west or south,
you know what I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
You don't want to go north far north.
Speaker 3 (57:49):
You're going to go now as far as north as
we're going to go.
Speaker 1 (57:53):
In all seriousness, I think we'll talk more once you're done.
But I definitely would like to put something on our
page to like get thank you, get the word out there,
because like I feel like y'a are doing all the
heavy lifting, and like if there's anything that we can
do to help that, because like I said, I think
one of the things is is that there are a
lot of people that get kicked and get knocked down
(58:13):
and they stay down, and I'd like you to tell that.
I'd like you to tell that story that you told
when you were bowling about how Justin how proud of
you he was and everything, and and I think that's
a good way to end what we're talking about. But
I just like you to tell that story and any
(58:35):
other story that you think about with him, about how
proud he is of what you've done with his association,
you know, with his scholarship fund and everything else, because
he is proud of you. He is.
Speaker 3 (58:46):
Justin was always proud of me.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
Always he We started each day by saying, good morning,
I love you, I hope you have a good day.
We ended each night by saying good night you. Thank
you for all you've done for me today, and I'm
proud of what you accomplished today. That's how we started
(59:09):
every day and ended every day.
Speaker 1 (59:11):
Quick question. Do you say at that time that you
plastered him with the air brakes?
Speaker 3 (59:16):
Yup, he did.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
Thank you for making me feel like a bug today.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
Even the morning that he woke me up and he
was giving me a kiss on my cheek and I
thought a spider was crawling on me, and I square
punched him right in the face in my sleep, and
I pulled back like and I'm like, what is going on.
I opened my eyes and he goes hurts to hit steel,
doesn't it And I said yeah, And he's like, I
(59:43):
love you, baby, And that was that.
Speaker 3 (59:44):
So yeah, so yeah. Even when I punched him square
in the face for giving me a kiss to wake
me up, how dare he? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (59:52):
He whether I put his face with the air brakes
in the windshield, he didn't care. He was proud of
me all the time. If I cooked for him to
take somewhere, he would come home and tell me how
much everybody loved it.
Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Baby. They loved it. They said it was so good,
it was the best. He was like, and I told him,
that's my wife.
Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
And we were bowling one time, and we were at
the very end of the alley, so there's the whole
other end of the alley, and I knocked down two
pence two pence, and that man stomped and clapped and
(01:00:36):
stood up and was screaming.
Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
That's my wife. Good job, baby. And it was two
freaking pins. It was two free. He didn't care.
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
It didn't make a difference what I did, how grand
or how bad, because even when I failed horribly, he
was like, baby, that was great. I made pork chops
one time, they were like freaking hockey pucks. They were
so hard and he was trying and he was like, no, baby,
I'll eat it. And he's trying to cut that pork
chop and the whole table is shaking. My mom's like,
(01:01:06):
just give it up, justin as and he was like, no,
I'll try, and then he choose in.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
His mouth and he was like, it's like pork jerky.
It's great, it's great.
Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Well, I just want you to know how much I
appreciate the impact that you've had on Thank you my
life through my wife, Like I said, I get the
joy of seeing how committed she is to us, but
also how committed she is to other people. And it's
(01:01:38):
great to hear it from somebody that has at their worst.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
My my whole experience, and even even though those officers
wouldn't look at me, and the one I was trying
to shove water down his throat, like from that moment
through now, I've had nothing with the exception of the
one advocate.
Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
And again I don't her name. It's not Judy. I
love Judy Brooks is an we will.
Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
We will say their name. I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Judy Brooks is an amazing, amazing advocate, victim witness advocate.
Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
She's amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
And there was a woman who retired who was in
there too, and I don't remember her name, but she
was super nice. But there's another woman that I don't
know anyway. Anyway, with the exception of that victim witness advocate,
the first one that was assigned to me, I've had
nothing but positive experience, like through the whole even at
(01:02:37):
Driscoll funeral home with the cops being there to direct
traffic with the.
Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Ride from.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
The church to the private cemetery because he's buried my
brother in law's property.
Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
So that's the namous too. Out sixty West, we had
e w phone here and like that's one of the
things that he always did is he always made sure
families were taken care of.
Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
He led, He led it like we also had the.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
No I don't remember their name. There are the ones
that started showing up two military funerals to stop those
freaks the Westboro Church.
Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
Yeah, that that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
The people who ride the veterans who ride on their Harley's. Yes,
they led like it was fire than them than me,
that weren't than justin then you know, so we they
they were there.
Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Too, and I can't god, I can't remember their names now,
but because Justin had a full military funeral, they were there.
So yes, yeah, that's well.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Like I said, I I never met him, but like
I love hearing stories. Yes, I really appreciate you taking
the time to come in and talk to us about
like his life, because I do think it's important for
I think people talk, especially you know, they talk about
officers that die in the line of duty and things
(01:04:20):
like that, and I do think that quote of like,
it's not how they died, it's how they lived that's important.
And and yes, and you're you're what Justin did for
his time on this earth, what he meant to you,
but also what he meant to everybody else. I think
it's awesome that you came on here and told us
about that. Thank you for your time.
I'm glad to have Christine Samuel's on today. I know
she's meant a lot to my wife, and I think
they meant a lot to each other. Yes, you have
an amazing story to tell. You were married to an
amazing man and he had a really he had a
big heart. You were telling me about him earlier. I
just would like to give you an opportunity to just
(00:27):
kind of talk about the things that how you met
Justin and all the things that you experienced all the
way up until the time of his death in twenty nineteen,
and then just talk about where you went from there.
But like, let's start with just your story about your y'alls,
the love story of the New Jersey and the country boy,
(00:48):
the loaf of white Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
The big old country loaf of white bread. I moved
down to Virginia from New Jersey in two thousand five, Yeah,
two thousand and five, and I had worked in the
court system in New Jersey. Prior to that, I worked
for two attorneys. So I was looking basically from Amherst
(01:15):
to Richmond area, going back into the court system. Cool,
and then my mother said to me, she was retired.
She said, you know, can you just take six months
and help me get accuimated to the area. She's never
very comfortable driving anywhere or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
So I said sure.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So when spring came around, I was like, you know,
we need things. It was a new build the house.
We needed some trees, we needed you know, lawn things
because now we have an acre and a half.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
We're in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
We just had our little one hundred bye hundred lot,
you know. So I was like, I'm going to go
to Low's. I had worked retail prior, and I was like,
I'm going to go to Low's, get that discount and
my friend day there, I met Olga Dawson and we
started talking and that was, you know, my first friend
(02:09):
really that I had made. I knew people down here,
but more in the Farnville area. So she and I
became friends, and she started inviting me over on Sundays
for dinner, like cook together. She's Mexican, I'm Italian. We
like to cook and Nascar, and I'm not a fan
(02:32):
of NASCAR in the least little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
So it was always like, seriously, the race would.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Come on and I'd like take a nap, but she
was doing it because her husband's best friend Justin was there.
He would come over every Sunday for dinner and to
watch the race. And that was why it took that
man a while to get up the nerve to talk
to me.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
To not you seem so approachable with that jersey accident
and everything.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
I think that's exactly it. He was like, you know,
he did.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
He said, He's like, I've got perfection here. I don't
want to mess this up. If I'm just watched or
just like the race, I'll be okay.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yes, So it took him a good while to get
up the nerve, about eight months or so to get
up the nerve to.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's almost a whole season of races.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Nightmare, nightmare.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
But you know nothing that my mom loves NASCAR now
because my husband. But but I don't.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I never, I never did.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I like, you know, football, baseball, and hockey. So yeah,
I'm a little more aggressive than my husband.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
But when he finally got up the nerve to ask
me if I wanted to hang out, I was like,
you know, sure, And it was kind of awkward our
first little meet up, and then I didn't hear from
him for like a few days. So then he called
me to tell me that something had happened with his mom.
(04:03):
And we were talking and he was like, do you
want to, you know, have dinner? And I was like, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
So he actually cooked for me. Oh cool, he cooked
for me.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
I went to his house and he cooked for me
and made this amazing dinner. And I was like, damn this,
this man can cook too.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
But that was one of his things.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
He had to make sure that I could cook before
he asked me, you know. So he was too busy
with the races to realize that I had been helping
prepare meals this whole time. But yeah, and he told
me that he was sorry he didn't call me right away,
but he was nervous. I made him nervous and no
(04:46):
one has ever made him nervous before, and he wasn't
used to being around another alpha type personality.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So I said, okay, I can definitely relate.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yes, I think you absolutely can. I think you absolutely can.
And we have been described as what happens when an
unstoppable force him meets an immovable object me, or when
a tornado meets a volcanout. So that is you know,
(05:15):
the two of us, and that's how we were and
we started really dating. You know, quickly things got very
involved where everybody said it wasn't going to happen quickly.
I was going to realize that hunting was more important
to him because it was General Farms.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
The two weeks at General Farms.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And so everybody was surprised when after hunting season or
dooring hunting season, I should say I was there because
excuse me. He had never set time aside during hunting
season for anyone or anything else. And I got in
I love you.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
He told me he loved me first, not even two
weeks into it, and that was like smack dab in
the middle of hunting season. Yeah, so everybody knew it
was different. Everybody knew like, okay, this is different. And
we moved in together. I moved in with him pretty quickly.
(06:20):
He had started talking about marriage, and I said, there's
no discussion until you meet my family in New Jersey.
But one of the one I'll back up a little bit.
When he told me he loved me, I was like,
you need to know like a couple of things. One
my mother will eventually be living with us, and two
(06:41):
I can't have children, nor do I want them. And
he was like, I don't want them. I don't want them.
He is number two of seven boys, and you know,
he was very involved with his brother's lives and he's like,
I'm good with us being the awesome aunt and uncle.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And I was like perfect, perfect, because that's what I
liked to.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
He was also a no dogs in the house type
of person until I came along and we got my
Jack Russell Eva and uh do though no, But then
we got my Akita pitbull mix and he was in
the house that was gunther, so he quickly The only
(07:27):
rule he had was they could not sleep in the bed,
our bed. They could sleep in any other bed, they
could be on the furniture that he just didn't want
them in the bed.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
My cat, on the other hand, she slept right next
to him, and that was that she would walk across
me to get to him. But ye, yes, so you
know that was that was the deal, and we were
we were both good with that. He met my family
in New Jersey and was kind of taken aback because
(07:57):
my mom is very, uh the opposite of me, and
my family in New Jersey is more like me.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
You know. My mom was just always she still is.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
She's well, she's sobbed. She will cut you, like verbally.
But you know, she's very much a lady. She's very
much not like me and my aunt, her sister, my
Ane Joan, who I love dearly. It was wild. You know,
she's ten years younger.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Than my mom. She's a hippie.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yes, they smoked her weed twenty four to seven and
he was like, oh, that she is nothing like your mom.
I was like, I told you, I told you, you know.
So it was funny when we got married because our
families are so different.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So where did you get married?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
We got married, which is it's now my brother in
law Gerald and my sister in law Britney's farm. It
was Ed and his wife, Ed Dawson, Keith's father Keith
and Olga, her father.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
In law's products.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
So it was down you're in.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Virginia, Yeah, it was. It was It was an amherst
Off sixty West, Okay.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
And so he didn't make the track back to New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
No, I didn't want when he So when he met.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Your family, did he did y'all go to New Jersey?
Did they all come?
Speaker 3 (09:12):
He went to New Jersey?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
What did that discussion on the way back from New Jersey,
sound like he was.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
You know one. That was the first time he ever
saw my road rage. Okay, that was the first time,
because I don't know, that's not.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
A thing for people from the north right New Jersey,
not at all.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
We're very meek and mild, and we don't scream at
anybody when we're driving.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, we're so you got to see some road rack,
he got.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
You got my full effect road rage to where I'm
I'm driving because I drove everywhere.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I have control issues, okay, and.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I'm driving and I'm hanging out the window like screaming
at this woman who swaw the sign for fifteen miles
that she was going to have to merge and decided.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Not to until get to the front of your car.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And yeah, until I made her hit the big orange thing,
until I made her.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That's I mean, that's some active road rage.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah. I was a moving exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I could not get to the right. I could not
get to the right. I was in you know, it's
and I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I was.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
She decided to not follow the science. I decided to
enforce the rules.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
All right, So anything else that you remember about your
discussion on the way back, He was.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I think he was surprised that it wasn't so city
because I am from most people would refer to it
as South Jersey except for the people who live there.
It's more like central. Most people say there is no
Central Jersey. But there's like north, and then there's like
(10:46):
South and like west like so, so.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It's not necessarily a city field. It's it's just or
is it a city field.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
There's a lot of people. There's a lot of people, but.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
It's not like a huge sprawling area like that where
I was from in Ocean County, in Little leg at
the southern part of the state.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
So you just north of Ocean City, Maryland then right, Or.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Is it Ocean No, north of Ocean City, New Jersey, yes, yes?
Or north of Ocean City, New Jersey. Yes, that's like
that's to me, that's real South Jersey.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
But he he was surprised. He was surprised that.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
When we came in through you know, crossover from Delaware
and we came through Hamilton, the amount of farms, like
he was, he was surprised at that. He was really
surprised at how bad the roads suck, how bad the
potholes are. He was like, do they not work. I
was like, no, they do, they just don't, you know,
work on some of them. I don't know, but he was.
(11:52):
I think at first he was overwhelmed by my family
because while he and his family, our loud bunch were
loud differently. I have had people say I do things aggressively,
like I walk aggressively, I talk aggressively. Well, my brother
(12:12):
was that way. And he only got to meet my
one brother because my other brother lived in Colorado. But
he met my aunt you know, and my aunt, my cousin, yes,
my cousins, and he was surprised at how short I
actually am because the rest of my family is tall.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I'm I'm not tall at all.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I had to wear shoes I had a little bit
of a heal in them so I could reach the
floor today. So how to do that because I've seen
the you know, I've seen the video clips. I've seen
the videos where and I'm like, I'm not going to
be able to reach the floor. But anyway, yes, because
because of the shoes. But he was, I think he
was surprised. I think he expected it to be more
(12:54):
more city or just more urban, you know, more of
an urban feel where it has the area that I
was from had more small town feel, and then my
brother was a little further north in Ocean County, which
was Point Pleasant, and you know that was that's the
beaches right there, that's you know which we're all.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It's all so on the East Coast. Who do you
think has the best seafood. It's a tough seafood.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
I love seafood.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I grew up Literally, you're driving and there's somebody under
a bridge that just caught things, and that's where you
get your seafood.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
So I can't.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Favorite favorite seafood dish. Is it with an Italian twist?
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Of course?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Of course it would have to be a chilpino or
fra diablo. It's just a spicier like the chiopino is
more of like a stew. It's got different types of
it's got muscles, clams, shrimp, you can throw other stuff
(14:02):
in there. I don't eat mussels or oysters. That I
do not do, but blue crabs are superior their taste.
It's just a lot of work to get things out
of It's a lot of work for a little bit
of meat, but it's the taste is so much better.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I can't be this far inland and think, oh this
is good seafood.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I just I can't. But or fra diabo, which is
a spicy marinara sauce with shrimp or crab or you
know whatever. We meet my family and I don't know
how Italian like, I know other Italian families do it,
but we do a crab sauce. It's we cook in spaghetti.
(14:49):
We call it gravy, but we cooked, you know, a
crab gravy. The crabs are cooked in there. It's a
little spicier, and it's just that's that's my favorite. My
mom's pasta, my mom's is my favorite of that. But yeah, okay,
that's my favorite.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So y'all get married. What year did y'all get married?
Speaker 2 (15:08):
We got married in twenty ten. We had been together
for a little over three years at that point.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Okay, yeah, all right, yeah, so you have this amazing wedding.
So what were you doing at the time? What were
you doing or do you have any really funny stories
from I mean, I think everybody has their own marriage
story of like the day that you got married. When
Aver and I got married, one of our kids came
up up to us and while we were doing our
dance and tried to hand us a fork to eat
eat a piece of cake, and I was like, well,
(15:35):
it's an informal thing. So it was. It was a
special time. So anything that you think about with your
marriage that you were like, man, this is this is
something I remember.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
We So first of all, we had this huge tent
I kept my one of my best friends kept calling
it the fairytale tent because there's this huge, white, you know,
tent and it's set up in the middle of the
woods where you couldn't even see it from you know,
anywhere else, and it was this perfect spot. And my
brothers in law came up with this genius idea to
(16:10):
enclose the generators with bales of hay. So it quieted them.
It did, It didn't They didn't know. You didn't hear
any of the generators running because we had I think
like five or six generators running. Because we had the
food that me and justin well, me, my mom, Olga,
my brother in law Johnny, we cooked all of the
(16:33):
food for our wedding.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
And our wedding was you know, the Jersey Shore meets
the Holler, and our food was the Jersey.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
You have that on your napkins.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
We should We absolutely should have because we had the
country folk fist pumping and the Jersey folk flat foot
and like it was.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
It was a it was a merge of culture.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
It was my aunt. My aunt got into.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The sounds, like everybody pretty much embraced me.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
We had.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yes, we had an amazing time and people talked about
the food. People still talk about the food. And it
was literally Italian meets, like I had my Italian dishes
and then we had our.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
You know, country dishes. We had stuff for the kids,
like you know, we we did everything.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
But that I think that's one of the coolest things
about a marriage and people coming together like that is
that like if you meet that happy like merge, it's
just it's just phenomenal. And I think that's just like
y'all what you and the two of y'all had built
that brought all that together, and it's just I think
that's pretty much how your life was after.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yes, it was, Yes, it was.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
You know, a mixture like that man taught me how
to drive a dump truck that had a sixteen foot
bed on it and dump a load of sixteen foot
you know, logs trees when we were logging. Taught me
how to operate a Cat nine fifty five L with
a four yard bucket or a three yard three yard bucket,
(18:04):
and you know, so they were the things that we did.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Did you have any road rage with that?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Nope, you can't get road range on because you are
not moving fast enough to do anything anybody. Like when
he first told me, he's like, I'm going to teach
you how to operate it. I'm like, where's a fucking
steering wheel and he's like, nope, it's off. But and
I was like, what all right?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I didn't I couldn't reach No, because the seat didn't
move up, and I had he had to put like
something behind me so that I could I could operate
the thing. I had to like slide forward. Yeah, same thing. Well, no,
the dump truck.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I can say this because I think we're beyond the
statue limitations, but I do believe that we were supposed
to have our CDL to operate the dump truck because
of the air brakes. And I'm not a feather the
brake type of person. And you were coming out of
bailey sawmill or belly sawmill. But yeah, that was the
(19:04):
sawmill back there, and you know, coming on to sixty
and he's like, all right, bib, just you know, inch forward,
just inch forward. So I'm like okay, and I look
and he's like, babe, easy on the brakes and he's
like kissing the windshield and he's like on the windshield.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
I was like, oops, okay, we got it.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
But yeah, our that's our wedding was you know, when
worlds collide. We were when world's collide, you know, and
it was that way. Was so many different things like
what was tradition for him versus what was tradition for us?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
And you know what became our tradition.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
So talk real quick about some of the traditions that
you had. I mean, I feel like you have like
a really rich culture on both sides. What does that
look like when families get together for holidays and things.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Like, oh gosh, holidays.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
So Justin wasn't huge on holidays when we first started dating, okay,
but he quickly wanted to.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Do this every year. Wanted to have a tradition.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So we do what we call the sam fam Christmas.
That is usually a couple of weeks prior to Christmas,
and that's only that way now because everybody started having kids.
Prior to we would do it pretty much right around
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, whatever it was. But you have
(20:29):
to understand that when we are all together, just the
immediate Samuel's family and the Dawson's, it's thirty people. Okay,
it's there. I always say we were, and nobody might
get this reference, but we roll deeper than Wu Tang
in ninety two because we we go deep. You know,
(20:52):
there's a lot of us I can remember, like, gosh, somebody.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
They would never probably put you together unless you are
talking to this exactly, like you know, the Jersey Yes,
and the white bread and.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
The white breads, the country the country folk. But and Olga.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Olga is Mexican from California, So yes.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
I thought she'd be Russian or something.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Everybody always says that Olga is actually a very traditional
Hispanic name.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Very common.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
She was named after her aunt, so yeah, and that's
another thing I say aunt. I don't say aunt. It's
an aunt step one.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
I don't know what an aunt is. But yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
We the same what is it called sam.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
The sam Fam Christmas and our our group chat is
a sam Fam group chat. But we get together and
it's gotten so big that you know, at first we
would do it at my house where I am now
mine in my mom's house, and we would do it there.
(21:57):
But then people started having kids and then it's a
and so now we've definitely outgrown that space. But we
have it at Keith and Olga's garage, which is huge.
It is huge, so we have many a party in there.
We break out the tables and the chairs, we set
everything up. You know, we can run exactly, they can
(22:19):
run around the property up most of the time because
there's a shooting range, so most of the time people
are shooting. Like well, that's kind of calmed down. But
but yeah, so it's been seventeen years of tradition, you know,
doing this, and we will pick a name. You know,
(22:47):
it used to be well, we used to pick a name,
and then when the kids started coming, we're like, oh,
we're just buying for the kids. And then we started
doing dirty Sanna. So some of the gifts are amazing.
Some of the gifts, you know, the guys picked him out.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
The guys came out.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Now you know, it's a case of beer, it's a
bottle of jack, it's you know, very very obvious things.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Some don't even wrap. Sometimes they're just in the food
line bag or Walmart bag. Yeah, for the bag.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
So you have all the Christmas traditions.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, we have that and Thanksgiving Thanksgiving too.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So one of one of the traditions, and I know
this is not the best part, but like one of
the traditions that you have, is the tradition that you
had of like opening.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Day, Yeah, opening day has Opening day of general firearms
has always.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
That's pretty cool because he also told you he loved you,
doesn't Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So that hunting season while as a wife, oh my god,
it can send us to the edge because they forget you,
forget they're married, they forget that. They say this, I'm
going to pick somebody. I'm going to pick him up,
which means I'm going to have to drop him off
at wherever they're starting at five o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Like it's frustrating.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
But the guys, the majority of them, would take the
full two weeks and that was that one year.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
One year sent them all to my brother in law, Joseph's.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I cooked a week and a half's worth of food
for all of them, and I was like, I don't
have to worry about it. Now, I don't have to
worry about it. You just seriously call me if you're
in a bind because you can't get somewhere. Because they
love to do you know, drink during during hunt and
season and you know, yeah, at the end of the
day they drink their beers, tell their stories.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
And but opening.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, yeah, but Opening day has evolved into an oyster
roast because usually Trinity Church how their oyster ros the
week before or you know, somewhere right around there, and
it's good oysters.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I don't eat snot, so I can't tell you exactly
what it's about.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
But you've heard stores.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, they they enjoy there. You know, I'll go there.
I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I don't, but he would go to the oyster ros.
Justin would go to the oyster ROAs every every year
or two at Trinity. But they do this thing, you know,
when they have their opening drive and they hunt throughout
the day. They have a system. The system is they
have a deer locker over at my brother in law,
Gerald's where they hang the deer and that's where they'll
(25:41):
skin and you know, quarter them up.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Then they move it.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
To Keith in Olgle's house where he has in the
garage autopsy tables basically you know, steing the steel or
steal whatever. They are tables that can get hosed and
bleached down, and they process all the deer. They make jerky,
they make summer sausage, they make I mean, it's you know,
it's two weeks of them doing this. It's two weeks.
(26:09):
And you don't have to get a deer to get meat.
If you help process, you get meat. I don't eat
deer meat anymore. When me and Justin were poor, when
we were poor, that's how we referred to it all
the time. When we were poor, we ate a lot
of deer meat, and I made a lot of bread
and pasta. He loves deer meat and decided he didn't
(26:30):
want to eat more any more bread and pasta. I decided,
I hate deer meat, didn't want to eat any more
of it, and I'll keep the bread and pasta.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
So that was, Yeah, we were It's an acquired taste, definitely.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, you don't acquire you don't have so yeah, my
I so talk a little bit. I know, it's not
the it's not definitely, it was a life chasing day.
Talk about opening Day twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
So three days prior, my neighbor was out front and
he was crying, or two days but I don't remember.
Two or three days prior, and Justin was getting ready
to go to work and he was like came around.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
He was like, what's the matter.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
And Carson, my neighbor, he was eighteen at the time,
said that his best friend had killed himself and he
just needed a hug, and Justin game a hug. Justin
was like a father to him. He was very much
a father figure to him. Carson had the code to
(27:39):
our house like on our on our keypad. Justin taught
him how to drive. Justin taught him how to do
a lot of things, yeah, how he should carry himself
in public, how to speak to people. At this point,
(28:01):
we had kind of pulled back a little bit from
Carson because he was disrespectful. He was super disrespectful, and
he had his issues, and I don't know the full
extent because I wasn't told about his issues.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
In depth.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
I wasn't told how bad they really were. I wasn't
told anything about that. But anytime his mother reached out
to me asking if Justin could reach out to Carson.
I made it happen, and Justin always willingly did it
because he genuinely liked the kid and wanted to see
(28:41):
the kid succeed. So his mother had reached out to me,
and I reached out to Hansom, and Handsome was like,
you know, no problem taking care of already talked to
him anyway.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
We're saying handsome is just.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Yes, sorry, handsome. He is.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
My license plate says handsome. I have always referred to
him as handsome.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
He's my handsome.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
I thought you'd have white bread or something.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
No, he's my handsome, my bubby, my beautiful boy. But
handsome was the most common, most common.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
So you have a troubled neighbor and your cousin's reaching
out trying to help them. Yes, and then it wasn't
like just one day of that.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
No, it was years. It was years of it. It
was years of it. Apparently Carson didn't make it. They
were I think by the time Justin got in touch
with them, they were doing their last drive over at
Ed's which is now my brother in law Gerald's, and
he didn't He didn't hunt with them that day, but
(29:48):
went back to Keith and Olga's to be with everybody
and yes, the oyster roast, and I I was getting
I still to this day, don't know exactly what was
going on there. I was getting different things. I have
(30:11):
his mother texting me telling me that he's just been
so upset, and then I have my sister in law
saying he's a mess. If Olga's saying he's a mess,
I'm thinking, you know, he's crying, he's doing all these things.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
And I'm like.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Being a bitch to everybody because I'm like, please just
understand that this kid just lost his friend. You know,
I'm being very protective, but not you know, I'm just
going by text. I'm not I don't have videos. I'm
not there. I don't know what's going on. And then
Olga had texted me and was like, he's going to
have to leave and I said it's that She was like,
he's being extremely disrespectful. So I said okay, and I
(30:52):
texted Justin and I said, you know, please just make
it home safe, and he said I will.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
And they got home.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
They pulled in my driveway. Justin had Carson with him.
Carson had driven there, but Justin and Carson with him,
because apparently the kid was messed up. Whether it's drugs
are alcohol, I don't know. And Brew had pulled in
behind him. Yeah yeah, Brew norkonk and Bruce one of
(31:22):
those you know brothers that isn't isn't biological. And apparently
what had happened while they were at Keith and Olga's
is Carson kept going to his car and at one
point he took a backpack out or had his backpack
and a handgun fell out. Justin scooped it up, gave
(31:46):
it to Brew said hey, can you hold on to this?
And Bruce said, no problem. So Brew followed Justin home
because there was some concern about getting him in the house,
you know, things like that. I was out side decorating
for Christmas. They were talking normally about ten minutes in
(32:07):
the driveway, and I could tell Justin was tired because
he wasn't saying much of anything. But you know, they
were just kind of laughing and talking. Nothing was going
on at this point. I do believe his mother had
come out and they were still in my driveway. Our
(32:29):
driveways are literally like my property goes right to theirs.
And I heard Bruce say, well, Justin said all right,
we gotta wrap this up. I'm going to bed. We're
done for the night. I've been up since you know,
whatever morning, whatever time. And Bruce said, oh, we got
(32:53):
one more thing, one more piece of business to handle.
And he said to Carson, do mind if I hold
on to this gun just for tonight. You're not in
your right mind. No, he didn't say, you're not around mind.
I don't want you to hurt yourself or somebody else,
like just yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
It was like a switch was flipped.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Carson started screaming about MS thirteen and there's bodies on
that gun.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Like he went from the country boy to like like
a street right.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
It's like thinking he's like got street cred and he's
you know, part of a gang, and just telling him
he's going to kill them all this shit and going
on and on and on, and I'm losing it. I'm
like I started recording and I start walking over there,
and it had gotten quiet.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Well, Carson was screaming, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
And then I heard the door close as I'm like
right there and because they had moved over into Carson's
driveway at this point, and I lost it. I was like,
I'm calling the fucking cops. I'm done with this shit.
I'm sick of living next to this, I'm sick of
(34:10):
this kid and all of this shit.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
I'm calling the cops.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
And I walked back up and I was on the
porch and Justin was like, bebe babe.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
He came running over. He said, babe, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
He went in the house, don't call the cops. Like
he went in the house like it's done, It's over with.
And I was like, all right, but if he comes
out of that fucking house, I'm calling the cops. And
I had gone back inside for maybe five six minutes.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
And I came.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Outside and I was finishing doing up some decorations on
the porch and I started walking over there because it
was just Justin brew and Carson's mother, and I started
walking over there, and I heard the front door open
to Carson's house and I heard him come down the steps.
(35:01):
But he wasn't yelling, he wasn't nothing. He was completely calm.
And I could hear him walking on the sidewalk as
I'm walking on my sidewalk, and he said, you want
to see what I'll do. And it was immediate gunshots,
(35:25):
two to three shots, a tiny, tiny pause, and then
two to three.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Shots more then you that's when you started inside. Correct.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I turned. I was dialing nine one one as I
was running up the steps, and I'm screaming up my
mom he shot them, he shot them. And she's like,
I don't think it was comprehending. She's like, Chris, do
you know that for sure? Like what's going on? And
I was like, he shot them? And I'm on.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
With dispatch and I'm at in my laundry room and
I had to open the window because that looks out
right over.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
What time of days is It's only nine o four people,
so it's dark. It's dark outside, so you really can't
see a lot of anything.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
No, And it was so dark that night.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
And you're and we're not talking about like a city street.
We're talking about like, no, there's no lights. Yeah, there's
there's no lights, just a little light of whatever's coming out.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yes, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
So you're on the phone with nine on one, You're
and all the emotions and everything that are going through
your mind and everything else.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Screaming for justin No, screaming for him because in my
heart I knew he was gone, because he would have
the first thing he would have done was yelled out
to me to get in the house. I'm okay, don't worry.
(37:04):
And he wasn't saying anything right, and I just kept
screaming and I didn't hear anything from Brew, and then
I heard moaning moaning, and Dispatch kept asking me Justin's
name and what happened?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
And I'm losing it, Like I've spelled his name, I've
said his name, I've said my like eight times, like.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Please just see somebody.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yes, But now I understand that Carson had called nam
on one twice while I was on the phone, and
I part of me thinks there might have been another
I don't know, but I hear Brew moaning, and I'm like, Brew,
(37:47):
what is going on? He's like, I don't know. I said,
do you know if Hansom's all right? He said, I
don't know Alpha.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
I don't know Alpha's.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
We know who Alph is.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
And uh, he said it's bad and he was talking
about himself.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Oh Brew. Brew had called nine one one.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Also, yes, he drug himself because he had I think
at least two shots center like abdomen, and he drug himself.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
We're not talking about like your average heart. I mean,
this is a marine.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
He's a marine. Yeah, and Justina's army, you know, their
military there.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
So they know what's They knew what was going on.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
And Brew had drug himself and climbed up into his
truck to get his phone so that he could call
nine one too, and he was like. He asked me,
did you call? And I said, I'm on the phone
with them now. He said, are they coming? I said,
they're coming, Brew, They're coming. And I'm not hearing from
(39:01):
Justin and.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You're still inside. You're just yelling at the one, I guess.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
And at first Despatch asked me if I could go
outside to look, and I said, he was shooting.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
He was still out. I could hear yelling at first,
you know that he was still outside and I didn't.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I didn't. I didn't get shot, but I just wanted
to get to Justin. And I went outside. She said
they should be there any minute. And I went outside
and I was yelling for Justin. But I'm tending to Brew.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Because you're at his truck right and at this point,
you don't know where you don't know where Carson is.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
No, I didn't know where him or his mother were.
I knew she was alive because I could hear her screaming,
but I had my phone in my hand. And the
police pulled up and it was so dark that night,
(40:11):
and they get it. There were two different cars and
they get out of their car and I hear them
like I'm talking. I'm like, it's next door, it's next door.
And then I hear them like put your hands up,
and I'm like, shit, my phone is in my hand,
like I didn't even you know what I mean, Like
it's so dark, and I just like tossed my phone
(40:32):
and I'm like, he's next door. He shot them, And
I'm like, I don't know where my husband is.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
And I remember.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Paramedics wouldn't look at me. None of the officers, unseene
would look at me every time I asked about my husband,
like I don't know who who your husband is. And
I'm like the other person that got shot, Like, please
(41:18):
tell me what's going on, Please just tell me?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Is he dead? Is he okay? Please just tell me.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Because this is several minutes later, you still don't know.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
And I remember one of the officers coming in the
house with me, and I was so freaking embarrassed because
I had dishes in the sink.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
It's crazy what you remember. I was so.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Embarrassed because I was like, oh my god, the dishes.
I need to do the dishes.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
And then I'm worried about the officer. I'm like, can
I please get you some water? Like do you need
and he's like no, no, Like I'm filling up water
for him and he's like, how about you drink the water?
And I'm like, but do you need it?
Speaker 2 (42:00):
You know?
Speaker 3 (42:01):
And it wasn't registering that he was gone.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
You just didn't want to know. You just didn't want,
you want to do anything, you wanted anything, but to
know that, I mean, you knew in my heart.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
I knew because he the first thing he would have
said is I'm okay staying in the house.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
And it was just reinforced by what everybody else is doing.
And so you're already transitioning, trying to help other people
figure it out.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
And by this time, oh, if my family starts showing up,
you know, they you need somebody to you need a
family to assemble.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
They are the ones.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
They're all mills and the white bread was gone.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Okay, Keith and Olga well Olga was on the phone
with my mom when the shooting happened. Keith and Olga,
Jonathan which is Justin's brother, Joseph, Justin's brother, Jake, Jarrell,
(43:09):
and Brittany, which all all of the boys. There's seven boys.
They all have the same initials, so it's they're all
j names, same middle initial. Josh got there, and Josh
got there fast and he lives in Slevannah.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Probably a lot faster than the cops should have got there. Right,
you're saying, how do you? How does how does family?
It is? It is so fast, it's crazy when you.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
But I just remember, like I know people were there,
and I know sometime had passed, But then I was like,
Josh is here, Like that's like that's freaking fast.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Like he's a firefighter with citysh.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
He knows, he knows how to drive. So they're transitioning
at that point, Ye take care to take care of you.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I get like I was Mary and Jimmy, Alan were there,
my friends, Lindsay's so many people and I remember and
(44:15):
I think at the time he was a major. Elliott
kept trying me to get me to write my statement,
and I'm not like I'm trying, but at this point,
nobody has said to me that Justin was dead or alive.
(44:36):
And I knew, but I needed to hear. I needed
to hear that he was gone. And I said to Elliott,
is he God? Is he?
Speaker 3 (44:56):
And he said yes? And I went about other men
threw up.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Those are like some of the most difficult I'm not
making excuse me or anything that we did, but those
are such difficult things because we want I always think
about military families and I remember talk. I remember reading
one of the guys that had to come back and
tell a wife, a spouse that one of his teammates
(45:30):
had been killed in Afghanistan, and he said he was
looking and he saw the decorations, and he's like, I
just wanted these kids to have this family, to have
just two or three more minutes of peace. And I
think sometimes we forget, like you already know, yeah, you
already you know as the spouse, you already know, you've
(45:51):
already you have that connection, you already know, and maybe
it's better for us just to like give you. And
it's just I.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Also understand too, from the standpoint of the police, that
you're still trying to uncover what happened, and you need
real reactions, not.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Script that you need, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Like I mean, I think one of the things I've
heard repeatedly from my wife about you is just how
understanding you are and how you always seem to give
people the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
And I do.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
But but I also think that like the other side
of that is in law enforcement, just hearing your story, man,
We've got to do better, We really do, because like
y'all know, you knew, you knew, you knew after that
first few gunshots, like you know, yeah, you knew it
was gone. And I you know, I think one of
(46:51):
the things that I think is the most difficult in
our profession is to see people like you and think
we can do better. And I don't want to leave
it there because I think one of the greatest things
about your story is how you honored the life that
Justin lived and so talk a little bit about like
(47:15):
that was such a dark place, It was a dark
knight for you, and.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Even these the clearest memories, And I feel bad badly,
but I can't see Klay Thompson without thinking about that,
(47:41):
you know, because he was there until he was taken away.
And he gave me his wallet. And on the flip side,
Amber came in at the same time. But I don't
know if it was that damn snowsuit she was wearing,
but she was cool. So she came in her little
(48:01):
snowsuit and I just thought, Oh my god, she's so
freaking adorable.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Look at her like that was my first.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Don't ever call her adorable. I called her adorable one
time in court. Oh she lost it, she lost her mind.
She's like, I'm not adorable. I am fierce.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
She is fierce, and she's adorable. She's just like me.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Maybe that's what it is. Her feet wouldn't reach Florida.
So talk a little bit about that. Talk a little
bit about being a victim and of a violent crime
and how big of a role an advocate plays in
that for you.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Full disclosure, I don't remember my first advocate's name.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
I'm saying, just an advocate on your behalf, on my behalf,
because I feel like I feel like between you and Amber,
y'all established this connection early on, and she was your advocate.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
She was my advocate, she was champion. She's my first advocate. Sucked,
my first assigned advocate. I don't remember her. She's not
there anymore. But Amber was immediately. I don't know if
it's because we do have similar personalities. I don't know
if it's because we both have you know.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
You're both alphas. Yeah, you're both alphas.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
We can detect bullshit really quick, you know we have that,
And I immediately felt safe with her.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
You know why I think it is is all those reasons,
But I also think it's because she does this job
for the right reason.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
She does, she absolutely does.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
And she saw you in your worst time and she
was like, that's who I'm that's who I'm gravitating to,
and I'm going to take care of her.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
That woman.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Let me tell you, I can't tell you the amount
of emails back and forth that and she would answer
each and every question, even if it was asked forty
times prior. She would answer it when it came time.
She told me repeatedly, repeatedly, I will give information to
whoever you allow me to. Somebody comes in here asking
(50:06):
for information. I don't care if they're family. They don't
automatically get that information. That's you're the value.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
You own that information.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
You're allowed to tell who.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
You want me to I will tell them as much
or as little or nothing, whatever it is. And she
drove that point home with me.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
She lives, she lived it, She lived it with you
because she would get asked her as little as she is,
she will, she fights, she is.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
She is a fighter and I love that.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
And so when I'm like, Okay, the family wants to
come in to ask you some questions, to go over
some things, is that okay.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
That's the first time I met y'all.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, And she was like, yeah, but we have to
meet over in the sheriff's apartment because there's not enough room.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
We did the courthouse though, didn't we didn't we do
it in the courthouse.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
No, that was the second one. That was That was
the second or third one. Yeah, you know theirs. We
were down in the basement of the Yeah, and I
broke the chain thing going down the steps.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Oh, the plastic one.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah, it's not because as I did was go like that,
and I was like, well, good fuck, No, I just
tried some some property at the sheriff's apartment.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
Okay, that's the least. That's the least. That's the least
they could do. We're public service.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
So but she always always answered, you know, to all
of us, she very much put herself out there and
made herself available and lyle too towards Amber was our
my poor number one contact, you know she was. And
(51:46):
I am proud to call Amber a friend now, you
know what I mean, Like when I see her daughter
walking through the hallway at school and like songs nobody's
messing with there were good, you know.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
And you don't know how much we appreciate. And so
having an advocate like that and seeing someone be there
for you, how does that? How does that feel now
to be that for other people, like in the schools
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
I have met with several students already and I've gone
like into classrooms and I have told them flat out,
if you cannot be your own advocate, you are unsure
about speaking up about something, I'll be that auntie. I
(52:35):
will be that person who will speak up for you.
I am going to you know, my job is to
like per my you know, my job the company I
work for is to help students and their parents with FAFSA,
which is the Free Application for Federal Student Loan Scholarship searches,
(53:00):
comparing their aid offers, like helping them in that area
I am also in a situation where I can help.
In my position, I can help students who have unusual
circumstances who maybe do not live with a parent, who
are in foster, who are not documented, or their parents
(53:28):
aren't documented, many different things where it's not a traditional
two parent or mind two parents, but one parent. You
know if they don't because until you're twenty four, you
have to go in the FAFSA, like a parent has
to go in the FAFSA. That's your contributor. A lot
of kids don't have it. Their parents are incarcerated or
(53:51):
addicted or whatever.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
So I'm not engaged.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
Yeah, they're just not engaged at all.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
And so it's like for me, it has to feel
really good to be over, Like I will be your voice.
I know what it's like to not have a voice,
and I had somebody give me my voice back. Yes,
and so how does that feel?
Speaker 3 (54:12):
It feels really good.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Like one of the things we do as a family,
the guys, which I had told you a little about earlier,
but the guys every hunting season take up a fund
and it goes to families in the Amherst area who
are in need at Christmas time. So that they can
have a good Christmas so that their bills can be paid.
(54:35):
Last year, five families got a thousand dollars each.
Speaker 3 (54:37):
Last year. Also, Beth, who's home burned down, she got
a good chunk.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Of How crazy is that that somebody that worked at
the Sheriff's office, a victim of a violent crime, started
a nonprofit, yes, scholarship fund, and that money went to them.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
All of the Samuels boys and brew called best Mom, Mama, Hunt,
She's They're all family. So when this happened at that time,
when we have been taking up money, they were like, well,
we're directing, you know, some of that's going to bath
and then the rest will go. And Beth at first
she was like, no, I don't and they're like, no.
Speaker 3 (55:18):
She's she's such a good family. All of them are
so amazed. Hard work and white bread yes, yes, cheese country, yes.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
I mean she could live. She could live on the land, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
All of them, her and her brothers, all the majority
of my Samuel's family can live off the land. Yes,
they can all do it.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
I just cook.
Speaker 3 (55:43):
I'll just can yell at people when they need it.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
So, but what's the name of it? So just so
we can, because that's one of the cool things about
what we do is we can actually push that information
out there. So we'll get I don't know if you
have a link or whatever, but well, but what we
will do is we'll definitely put it out there and
just and put out like so, what's the name of
the the.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
Scholarship is the justin A. Samuel's Memorial Scholarship Fund, Okay,
and so and then the guys take up their own fund.
It they just call it the Christmas Fund. That is
basically has been just them raising that money. Those amounts.
The people they hunt with, people they know, things like that.
(56:28):
Even the scholarship last year, I was able to give
five students five hundred dollars each. So I raised twenty
five hundred dollars. One was to Spike hunt best nephew
because I put it to the family. I said, look,
Spike is graduating this year. This kid has worked hard, hard,
and I know he'll have you know, he may not
(56:49):
be in a lower tax bracket like some of the
other students, but he's still going to have cost and
you know, he's going you know, big animal event like
he's he's doing the things and I know and I know,
(57:09):
I know, damn well, if Justin were alive, he would.
Speaker 1 (57:13):
Make them support something local.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
So you know, that is what happened. And all of
the money we raised will go to students at AMers
County High School. All the money that's raised through the
Guys for Christmas will go to AMers County families. If
we get bigger, if we hit that nonprofit status, we
(57:35):
will probably expand to Nelson because Justin love Nelson County too.
Speaker 3 (57:41):
I don't know if we would go west or south,
you know what I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
You don't want to go north far north.
Speaker 3 (57:49):
You're going to go now as far as north as
we're going to go.
Speaker 1 (57:53):
In all seriousness, I think we'll talk more once you're done.
But I definitely would like to put something on our
page to like get thank you, get the word out there,
because like I feel like y'a are doing all the
heavy lifting, and like if there's anything that we can
do to help that, because like I said, I think
one of the things is is that there are a
lot of people that get kicked and get knocked down
(58:13):
and they stay down, and I'd like you to tell that.
I'd like you to tell that story that you told
when you were bowling about how Justin how proud of
you he was and everything, and and I think that's
a good way to end what we're talking about. But
I just like you to tell that story and any
(58:35):
other story that you think about with him, about how
proud he is of what you've done with his association,
you know, with his scholarship fund and everything else, because
he is proud of you. He is.
Speaker 3 (58:46):
Justin was always proud of me.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
Always he We started each day by saying, good morning,
I love you, I hope you have a good day.
We ended each night by saying good night you. Thank
you for all you've done for me today, and I'm
proud of what you accomplished today. That's how we started
(59:09):
every day and ended every day.
Speaker 1 (59:11):
Quick question. Do you say at that time that you
plastered him with the air brakes?
Speaker 3 (59:16):
Yup, he did.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
Thank you for making me feel like a bug today.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
Even the morning that he woke me up and he
was giving me a kiss on my cheek and I
thought a spider was crawling on me, and I square
punched him right in the face in my sleep, and
I pulled back like and I'm like, what is going on.
I opened my eyes and he goes hurts to hit steel,
doesn't it And I said yeah, And he's like, I
(59:43):
love you, baby, And that was that.
Speaker 3 (59:44):
So yeah, so yeah. Even when I punched him square
in the face for giving me a kiss to wake
me up, how dare he? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (59:52):
He whether I put his face with the air brakes
in the windshield, he didn't care. He was proud of
me all the time. If I cooked for him to
take somewhere, he would come home and tell me how
much everybody loved it.
Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Baby. They loved it. They said it was so good,
it was the best. He was like, and I told him,
that's my wife.
Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
And we were bowling one time, and we were at
the very end of the alley, so there's the whole
other end of the alley, and I knocked down two
pence two pence, and that man stomped and clapped and
(01:00:36):
stood up and was screaming.
Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
That's my wife. Good job, baby. And it was two
freaking pins. It was two free. He didn't care.
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
It didn't make a difference what I did, how grand
or how bad, because even when I failed horribly, he
was like, baby, that was great. I made pork chops
one time, they were like freaking hockey pucks. They were
so hard and he was trying and he was like, no, baby,
I'll eat it. And he's trying to cut that pork
chop and the whole table is shaking. My mom's like,
(01:01:06):
just give it up, justin as and he was like, no,
I'll try, and then he choose in.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
His mouth and he was like, it's like pork jerky.
It's great, it's great.
Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Well, I just want you to know how much I
appreciate the impact that you've had on Thank you my
life through my wife, Like I said, I get the
joy of seeing how committed she is to us, but
also how committed she is to other people. And it's
(01:01:38):
great to hear it from somebody that has at their worst.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
My my whole experience, and even even though those officers
wouldn't look at me, and the one I was trying
to shove water down his throat, like from that moment
through now, I've had nothing with the exception of the
one advocate.
Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
And again I don't her name. It's not Judy. I
love Judy Brooks is an we will.
Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
We will say their name. I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Judy Brooks is an amazing, amazing advocate, victim witness advocate.
Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
She's amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
And there was a woman who retired who was in
there too, and I don't remember her name, but she
was super nice. But there's another woman that I don't
know anyway. Anyway, with the exception of that victim witness advocate,
the first one that was assigned to me, I've had
nothing but positive experience, like through the whole even at
(01:02:37):
Driscoll funeral home with the cops being there to direct
traffic with the.
Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Ride from.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
The church to the private cemetery because he's buried my
brother in law's property.
Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
So that's the namous too. Out sixty West, we had
e w phone here and like that's one of the
things that he always did is he always made sure
families were taken care of.
Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
He led, He led it like we also had the.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
No I don't remember their name. There are the ones
that started showing up two military funerals to stop those
freaks the Westboro Church.
Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
Yeah, that that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
The people who ride the veterans who ride on their Harley's. Yes,
they led like it was fire than them than me,
that weren't than justin then you know, so we they
they were there.
Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Too, and I can't god, I can't remember their names now,
but because Justin had a full military funeral, they were there.
So yes, yeah, that's well.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Like I said, I I never met him, but like
I love hearing stories. Yes, I really appreciate you taking
the time to come in and talk to us about
like his life, because I do think it's important for
I think people talk, especially you know, they talk about
officers that die in the line of duty and things
(01:04:20):
like that, and I do think that quote of like,
it's not how they died, it's how they lived that's important.
And and yes, and you're you're what Justin did for
his time on this earth, what he meant to you,
but also what he meant to everybody else. I think
it's awesome that you came on here and told us
about that. Thank you for your time.
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