7, including teen’s mother, face charges in gang-related killing of 14-year-old boy

MILLCREEK — Two adults and five teenagers were charged Monday in the shooting death of a 14-year-old boy at the Monaco Apartments in Millcreek last month.

Jayvon Dajon Cooper, 20, and Jaden Dino Papenfuss, 17, were each charged in 3rd District Court with murder, a first-degree felony; obstruction of justice a second-degree felony; and five counts of shooting a gun, a third-degree felony. Whitney Michelle Vasquez, 36, was charged Monday in 3rd District Court with three counts of obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony. Papenfuss turns 18 in two weeks.

Four others, ranging in ages from 14 to 17, are listed as co-defendants.

About 2:30 p.m. on Aug. 25, John Mula, 14, was shot and killed at the Monaco Apartments, 4115 S. 430 East. A neighbor told police that just as John walked past her apartment, a four-door Chevy Impala with dark-tinted windows drove up, “three people got out of the car, walked around toward the male, and all three started to shoot at the male,” according to charging documents.

Unified police detectives later learned that there were six people inside the car who were all members of, or hung out with the same gang, and said members of the gang “were bragging about the incident on Instagram.”

Police located the Impala on Aug. 26 and kept surveillance on it. They watched as an elderly man walked out of a residence and started removing the stickers on the car’s rear window. When asked why he was doing that, he claimed that Vasquez, who is Papenfuss’ mother, told him to, according to charging documents.

When Papenfuss was tracked down and questioned by police, he claimed he had a “plan to go make a music video” on the day of the shooting. He claimed initially that after picking up those who were going to be in the video, he made a wrong turn into an apartment complex and suddenly there were gunshots, the charges state.

“Papenfuss said he did not know ‘he’ was dead, that it happens too much in Salt Lake,” according to the charges. “Papenfuss said that the murder is because kids do not know what to do, they do not mean to kill anyone and that it is because of peer pressure.”

But when detectives left the interview room, Papenfuss told his mother to call another teenager and convince him “to turn himself in and take accountability for it because he is 13 years old,” the charges state, adding that Vasquez replied “affirmatively.”

Other witnesses, however, say Papenfuss and Cooper were purposely looking for John and it was Papenfuss who told others in the car, “That’s him, that’s him, get out the car, get out the car and get him,” according to the charges.

Detectives also learned from serving search warrants on Cooper’s Instagram account that “Cooper instigated and involved the others in a confrontation of the victim with a firearm. Specifically, Cooper sent a message 18 hours before the homicide in a chat that included all other defendants, requesting that the co-defendants bring him a gun because the victim, identified by his moniker, was in the apartment complex allegedly harassing his family. Based on these correspondence, it is clear that the defendants knew the victim may be in the area because of Cooper’s message, and shows why (he) was the looking for (John) when he arrived in the area,” the charges state.

“The Instagram chat further demonstrates that all five defendants shared the same criminal intent when they drove over to where the victim was, jumped out of the car and fired their weapons at the victim as he tried to run away,” investigators wrote in the court documents.

The charges also note that Cooper was the only one in the vehicle over 18 and “encouraged the violent actions of the much younger defendants. This is a common strategy for older gang members, given the leniency of the juvenile justice system.”