Brother of shooting victim mourned

Daniel Miramontes never got over his younger brother's death.

"It haunted him," mother Brenda Miramontes said. "He could not let go."

He fell into depression, then into drugs. The 21-year-old blamed himself for not being present on June 8, 2008, when 18-year-old brother David Miramontes was gunned down at Bob Baskin Park on Oakey Boulevard, west of Rancho Drive.

Chris Luscombe, 19, also was shot at the park and later died.

Jessie James Cole, 22, faces two counts of murder with a deadly weapon in the slayings. He is detained without bail at the Clark County Detention Center.

In the months that followed the shooting, Daniel often called his mom in the middle of the night.

"Mom, mom," he cried out to her. "They took my brother, mom. I can't do it without my brother."

One of his friends, Sheldon Cooper, quit his job so he could take care of Daniel for a month.

"He wasn't able to live with the fact that he couldn't live without his brother," Cooper said.

Both brothers were tall. David was 6 foot 7 inches, surpassing his big brother by three inches, a fact that David didn't let his brother forget, Brenda said.

And they were inseparable, even when they were children.

Months after David was killed, Brenda was diagnosed with cervical cancer, which she's still being treated for. By then Daniel was self-destructing, but he vowed to be strong for her, Brenda said.

He voluntarily entered a rehabilitation clinic and started recovering. But his mother's health worsened, and after three months, he left to care for her and drove her to her doctor's appointments.

Monday was Brenda's birthday. On Tuesday night, Daniel said he wanted to go to a friend's house. But something wasn't right. He was slurring his speech.

She told him no, but he was insistent. So she drove him to the friend's house, and they fought along the way. When they got to the house, he took his bag from the trunk, which had some of his brother's clothes in it. He looked like he didn't know where he was, Brenda said.

After returning home, Brenda called the cell phone she had bought him with her birthday money. There was no answer. She got a call the next morning from the parents of Daniel's friend.

Daniel had overdosed on drugs and died, she said. A medical examiner has not yet determined how he died.

On Thursday night, Daniel's family and friends gathered at Desert Breeze Park, near Spring Mountain Road and Durango Drive, under the tree that was planted in David's memory.

Sherry Bryant, a family friend, put a sign in front of it. "Two brothers joined together again," it read. Several people burst into tears.

Friends gathered around Brenda, whose eyes brimmed with tears.

"Nobody's supposed to lose two babies," she said.

Although he was depressed, Daniel's death came as a shock to his stepbrother, 19-year-old Trevor Marcel. Marcel said he had tried to persuade his brother that he still had a reason to live.

"I had to keep him believing that he was living to take care of me," he said.

Contact reporter Lawrence Mower at lmower@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0440.