An argument over alleged bullying may have led to a fatal shooting at a school bus stop in Annapolis, leaving a husband and father dead.
The incident occurred last Wednesday morning on Clay Street near Bates Street, resulting in the death of 36-year-old John Simms Jr. and an injury to an 11-year-old boy who was shot in the foot.
“My husband wasn’t armed at all,” said Taneisha Simms, the victim’s wife, said Monday about the shooting. She described the heart-wrenching moment she and her children witnessed her husband’s murder.
“I just feel lost. I lost my soulmate, the love of my life… the man I planned to spend my future with,” she said.
The motive behind the shooting remains unclear, although police have said a fight earlier that week might have been a factor.
Taneisha Simms said she believes an argument triggered the violence. She explained that the day before the shooting, she and her husband had a conversation with a woman and her boyfriend, believed to be the suspect, about their child allegedly bullying the Simms’ child. On the day of the shooting, she said the couple confronted them at the bus stop.
“She maced me, my children… and my husband reacted to it and her boyfriend shot and killed him… shot him multiple times,” Taneisha Simms said. “It hurts because my kids and my mother-in-law and my sister, we watched my husband be murdered. And it’s heartbreaking. It just feels like my heart was snatched out of my chest and destroyed.”
The suspect, identified by police as 31-year-old Roscoe Jerome Jones of Oxon Hill, remains at large as U.S. Marshals work with police to find and arrest him. Annapolis Police Chief Edward Jackson stood at a news conference last week confident that an arrest would be made. “We do have leads. We have video, surveillance,” he said.
As Taneisha Simms grieves the loss of her husband, she said “it’s overwhelming.”
“When you go from being with someone every night and laying in their arms to now, you can’t hug them, kiss them, talk to them. All you have are memories and pictures,” she said.
The couple, who had known each other since childhood, would have celebrated their one-year wedding anniversarySunday. Instead, Taneisha Simms said she was occupied with funeral arrangements.
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