Parents speak about losing son to string of carjackings in DC, Prince George’s County
WOODBRIDGE, Va. (DC News Now) — The pain comes and goes each day but the reality hits hard for Jacob and Antoinette Walker.
Their son, Alberto Vasquez, was shot and killed in what turned out to be carjacking crime spree on Monday night that left another man critically injured.
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The gunman, Artell Cunningham, was killed by police in New Carrollton several hours later.
“It’s devastating,” Antoinette Walker told DC News Now. “Lack of sleep. Just trying to understand exactly what happened and why. Having to figure out how to share this with his daughters, who are only 10 and seven and just really getting an understanding of it because it’s just not understandable.”
A.J., which is the nickname his parents and friends called him, was the life of the party and always wore a perpetual smile and made friends wherever he went.
“He’s not a fighter. He’s never been that,” she said. “He’s just always been that loving child. I am now having to take pictures out (of) him to share with people that just didn’t know him … as a person.”
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The photographs of their son – scores of them spread out on the Walker’s dining room table – are not all that the family has left of their son who just celebrated his 35th birthday last month.
“He will be remembered,” Jacob Walker said of his son. “We will have good memories and we will remember them.”
The pictures show a young man who lived life to the fullest from childhood to adulthood: Shots of him with a Santa suit, at prom, with his children, friends and parents.
His death which stemmed from a carjacking was something that they never thought they would see happen to him, who just moved to D.C. a few years ago, his parents said.
“He just didn’t carry himself in the way or outside or inside the home that would warrant for him to lose his life,” his mother said.
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Jacob Walker said he trained his son to give up his car in a dangerous situation like a carjacking.
“If you’re in a situation such as this to just give [the car] away because it’s not worth your life,” he said. “At the end of the day, it didn’t work. I’ve got to live with that. She’s got to live with that. We’ve got to live with that.”
Both parents said there are details she still wants to know but the unknown is haunting them.
“If he laid there, if it was quick, if it was long?” his father said. “Did he cry?”
The Walkers drove to the area in Northeast D.C. where the shooting occurred in the 1200 block of 3rd St. Antoinette Walker said she saw what appeared to be his blood on the pavement and nearby grass.
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“We can’t make any more memories with him,” she said. “Now we have to live in these moments.”
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