Long before the Denver Crip set known as the Tre Tres became notorious for a link to the still unsolved murder of Denver Bronco Darrent Williams almost a year ago, they forever changed the life of Cathy Maestas for the worse.
Maestas’s son, Geranimo, was 16 on this day in 1993. He was walking down 33rd between Williams and High streets when three Tre Tres rolled up on him in a car. They wanted his Denver Broncos jacket bad enough that they were willing to shoot and kill Geranimo for it.
“I’m going to get through the day, I don’t do good,” Maestas said today, fourteen years after her son was a victim at the end of what was dubbed the Summer of Violence. “Anyone that ever says that time heals, they gotta be really cold, to just move on because I think I’ve been in shock for many years, but as time has gone on it’s gotten worse. And the violence is still out there, it’s so bad. That’s a heart breaker itself.”
The triggerman in her son’s killing received 64 years in prison after his two fellow Tre Tres broke the street code and testified against him. Another received 48 years in prison and the driver is now a free man in another state after completing his 12 year sentence.
Geranimo’s cousin also took a bullet that day and, though he survived, the bullet is still stuck in his body.
“And unfortunately my Mo didn’t make it, they shot him in his main artery and he lost too much blood and quote-un-quote they couldn’t save them both.”
At 6:30 tonight, at the same spot where her son was murdered for a jacket, Maestas will lead a vigil in memory of her son.
“Somebody asked me ‘if it’s so hard how can you do it,’ well because I have to do it, it’s always a reminder that my son wasn’t meant to be killed violently like that by gang members.” -- Luke Turf
