The troubled past of the Joliet man accused of murdering his family in what officials called a ‘reign of terror’
When Andre Shorter saw a TikTok about an eight-person shooting in his hometown of Joliet, Illinois, he didn’t expect to recognize the suspect.
“Usually you don’t see anything for Joliet on TikTok,” said Shorter, 22. “And then I saw Romeo’s face and was like, ‘What the … oh my God, Romeo?’”
Romeo Nance, 23, is accused of killing eight people in a Jan. 21 shooting spree that officials later called a “reign of terror” over Illinois’ third-largest city. He died the next day of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a standoff with U.S. marshals in Texas.
Will County officials identified seven of the dead, found in two homes on either side of West Acres Road, as Nance’s mother, aunt, uncle, brother and three sisters. Authorities identified the eighth victim, who died in unincorporated Joliet Township, as Toyosi Bakare, 28. Joliet police said one of Nance’s sisters is still alive.
Also alive is Nance’s 3-year-old son. The boy’s mother and Nance’s girlfriend, Kyleigh Cleveland-Singleton, 21, faces three charges of obstruction of justice for allegedly making false statements to officials in the wake of the shootings.
Police records, court records and interviews with those who knew Nance and his relatives reveal he came from a tightly knit, protective family that had lived in the southwestern suburb for more than a decade.
But they also disclose Nance’s troubled past, including a road rage confrontation where he shot at another driver multiple times and a fight in a jail breakfast line that left Nance’s cellmate with a broken collarbone because he allegedly hadn’t washed his hands.
Shorter said he and Nance played football together at Joliet West. He remembered him as a loner and as “an overly aggressive dude” who “got mad super easily.”
He recalled Nance getting into only one physical confrontation — on a bus with other players on the way home from a game. But he insisted there was something about his teammate that made people wary of saying the wrong thing to him.
Shorter saw Nance around social gatherings long after Nance left Joliet West in December 2015. He met his fair share of characters around Joliet, he said. But Nance, he said, “was one of the standout ones.”
‘We were all … hopeful for the future’
Nance’s family “showed up for everything,” his aunt, Cara Esters, told the Chicago Tribune.
The family members resided in two low-slung homes on either side of West Acres Road, walking distance from one another, as well as Joliet West High School, where Nance attended for one semester.
Tameaka Nance, 47, lived in house 2225. She was a nurse, and mother to Nance and his siblings Joshua, 31, Alexandria, 20, Alonnah, 16, and Angel, 14. She was protective and loving of her family, her sister said.
“She always took care of those around her,” Esters said. “She was the mother of all mothers who loved her children and treated other children as her own.”
Their other sister, Christine Esters, 38, lived across the street in house 2212, with their brother, William Esters, 35. Christine, a corrections officer, shared the role of family matriarch following the death of the sisters’ mother. Christine lived on West Acres Road for three years when Tameaka moved in across the street in 2022, Will County records show.
The family was busy with work, academics and extracurriculars. Alexandria, a recent Joliet West graduate, was pursuing a marketing degree. She “loved to learn about people. … She wanted to understand people, why they were the way they were,” Esters said.
Alonnah, a Joliet West junior, and Angel, 14, were both athletic, with the kids participating in wrestling, cheerleading and track and field. Esters described Alonnah as shy but with a sense of humor that emerged over time. Angel encouraged the people around her to do the right thing, Esters said.
Thanksgiving 2023 was an even bigger celebration than usual for her family, she said. Nance’s brother Joshua had just pulled through the worst of a serious neurological injury and Tameaka was looking forward to bringing him home from the hospital.
“We were all very excited and hopeful for the future because if he made it through that situation, then obviously he was supposed to be here,” she said.
It was the last time she saw them.
Since they died, Esters said she’s been dealing with waves of emotion, leaning on surviving family members and remembering her “strong, selfless” sisters and a brother whom she called a protector.
“We did lose a large part of us. But we’re still here,” she said of her surviving family.
While managing seven sets of end-of-life affairs, Esters has been holding onto memories of family vacations “anywhere with a beach,” standoffs over a final slice of cheesecake, playing games someone found on TikTok, and filming videos of their own. The grief comes and goes, she said.
“Like, I’m OK for a moment,” she said. “And then a wave will crash into me. And then it will recede.”
A flaring temper
Shorter, Nance’s former teammate, remembers Nance as being “known” for getting into trouble around town.
One October night in 2019, Nance and another man climbed into the back seat of the car Shorter was sitting in outside a Joliet smoke shop. He said he knew what Nance was going to do.
Shorter remembers Nance put a screwdriver into the chest of his friend, who was sitting in the car’s front seat, and robbed the pair of their phones and a backpack and fled.
Shorter’s friend called police and officers caught the pair soon after outside one of their homes. It would be the first of several criminal cases Nance accumulated between 2019 and his death.
Nance told investigating officers he did not wish to be interviewed, asked for a lawyer and yelled across the hallway that the other suspect should also ask for a lawyer, according to a police report.
As a first-time offender, Nance was eligible for a state program known as second chance probation. The program includes community service, drug testing and education and employment requirements, according to state statute.
Nance was determined to make his court dates and didn’t need to be reminded about his appearances, remembers his attorney, Jordan Kielian.
Once in February 2020, he wasn’t able to drive himself to court, so he rode his bike up Route 53 to make his appearance.
“It was just 1,000 semis and Romeo on his bicycle,” Kielian said.
Kielian said Nance completed the probation program “without a hitch” and pleaded guilty to the robbery charges in November 2020. Court records show he did 30 hours of community service at the Joliet Township Animal Control Center.
But he ended up back in court about two years later. According to a January 2023 police report, Nance started honking at another driver, pulled up beside her car, started screaming at her and threw a bottle of water at her car.
As the other driver followed him through a parking lot and a residential area, Nance allegedly pointed a gun out of his window and fired at her multiple times.
The gunshots struck the other driver’s car and a nearby home, where a resident “heard several loud bangs and then came into her kitchen to find a hole in her kitchen wall,” according to the report.
Prosecutors charged Nance with aggravated discharge of a firearm, aggravated assault, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm, court documents show.
Body camera footage from Nance’s January 2023 arrest, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request, shows officers apprehending Nance in the front seat of his car while a young woman screams that he doesn’t have an arrest warrant and argues with officers.
Nance, already handcuffed, appears to try to run and lands on his face in the snow while the woman continues to scream, “Don’t touch him!”
An older woman approaches the scene from across the street and demands that the officers show her a warrant before telling Nance, “Calm down, son.”
Subsequent body camera footage shows Nance pleading with officers to remove his ankle cuffs and asking the officer who’s driving him to the police station about the equipment in the squad car, particularly a license plate reader.
Prosecutors later charged Nance with obstructing a peace officer based on the events recorded in the body camera footage.
Kielian defended Nance against the charges. Nothing seemed amiss when he last saw Nance in November for a court date.
“He was on time to court. ‘Yes sir, no sir, thank you, have a good day,’” Kielian said. “When he was interacting with me or in court he was always very polite and very respectful.”
But records indicate that Nance wrestled with his temper throughout 2023.
In the January 2023 arrest report, Joliet police stated that Nance answered all questions with either “it’s not relative” or “suck my d—” and that officers ended their questioning after he became agitated. The report also states that officers found a handgun in the car where they arrested Nance.
Joliet police have not found a record of Nance holding a valid firearm owner’s identification card, a spokesperson said.
While in jail following the January arrest, Nance got into a fight with his cellmate in the breakfast line, records show. Nance accused his cellmate of not washing his hands after using the bathroom. The cellmate’s collarbone was broken during the scuffle that ensued, according to court records.
A week after the fight, a correctional officer heard Nance kicking his glass cell door and found the door damaged, according to a police report. Nance denied responsibility for the damage but was the only person living in the cell, the report said. A grand jury later indicted Nance for damage to government property.
Nance bonded out of jail in March 2023, according to records. His girlfriend posted the bail and listed herself as his sister on the form.
‘I keep thinking about that little baby’
Kyleigh Cleveland-Singleton and Nance were parents to a 3-year-old boy. The couple lived together in Colorado for a time. At the time of the Jan. 21 shootings, they were living with Nance’s family in Joliet, court records show.
Cleveland-Singleton’s grandmother, Carrie Sue Cooper, 64, described Nance as “controlling.”
The Colorado resident remembered arguing with him after she had purchased a tablet for Cleveland-Singleton so they could stay in touch more easily.
“Every time I tried to get a hold of her he was always on (the tablet),” Cooper recalled. “It was like, ‘Dude, I didn’t get it for you.’ He and I went a little bit round and round.”
Though she hadn’t seen her granddaughter in person for about six or seven years, she said they spoke via Facebook often including a few days before the shooting.
Cooper found out about the slayings two days after they’d occurred through another family member, she said. She broke down in tears when she heard.
“I didn’t know if Kyleigh was there, was Kyleigh gone, where (was) the baby,” she said. “My heart just went down to my feet.”
Joliet police would not say whether Cleveland-Singleton was home at the time of the shootings but said they found her and her son the next night in nearby Plainfield.
Cooper is trying to wrap her head around her granddaughter’s losses.
“She loses her boyfriend, she loses the entire family and so does (her son),” Cooper said. “I just can’t imagine what she’s feeling.”
She is worried for her great-grandson, for whom Tameaka Nance was an important caretaker, she said.
Cooper would sing to her great-grandson and tell him she loved him over video chats. He will soon turn 4, she said.
“I keep thinking about that little baby, it’s going to affect him in a big way,” she said. “Kyleigh is such a good girl, and now my great-grandson has got to grow up with no dad.”
She wants to know how her granddaughter is going to get her things out of the house on West Acres Road.
“Everything Kyleigh owns (is in the house),” she said. “For her and (her son) to walk back in that house, I can’t imagine it.”
Cleveland-Singleton faces three charges of obstruction of justice for her statements to officials shortly after the shootings. A grand jury indictment claims that she denied knowing Nance’s phone number and lied to investigators about when she last spoke to Nance. She claimed she last spoke to him at a gym and kept her cellphone from investigators to prevent authorities from reaching him, according to records.
She said she intends to plead not guilty to the accusations in her most recent court appearance on Feb. 8. She declined to comment to the Tribune through a friend who accompanied her to the hearing.
She is next set to appear in court March 7.
‘We may never know the truth or the motive’
What caused the deaths on West Acres Road remains a mystery to Kielian, the defense attorney.
“Even if you have an incredibly violent client, you’re gonna be shocked by what happened at the end of January,” he said. “I can’t point to a solution to something (if) I don’t know what caused his issue.”
Kielian said when he heard about the police activity around their home, he immediately called Nance, his mother and his uncle to make sure they were OK.
“Everybody I want to call to ask, ‘Hey, what happened?’ is deceased,” he said.
Shortly after the killings, Will County Sheriff Deputy Chief Dan Jungles warned that detectives may never pinpoint a concrete explanation for the violence.
“(In) many cases like this we may never know the truth or the motive behind these senseless killings,” he said at a media briefing.
Joliet Chief of Police Bill Evans concurred: “We can’t get inside his head,” he said. “We just don’t have any clue as to why he did what he did.”
Although Shorter didn’t know Nance well, he said seeing his former teammate on TikTok was more surprising than the reason he was on the social media site.
“If you were around the guy, you would understand,” he said. “I was surprised to see him on TikTok but I wasn’t surprised to see he did what he did.”
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