[Pinkie] Tymeir was the type of person
that you could always depend on.
[kissing sounds]
[Pinkie] Long as the people around him were
taken care of, that's all he cared about.
Tymeir and Rodney was like total opposites.
[Pinkie] Everything with Rodney was a joke.
He never really took nothing real serious.
Tymeir always tried to just play the big brother role to Rodney.
[Marc] Rodney, he embraced that street life.
Rodney didn't care about nobody but Rodney.
At the end of the day, my heart was shattered
in a million pieces.
[Stephen] He was begging for his life,
and his mother was begging for his life.
You can't get any more cold-hearted than that.
That is truly an evil person.
[sinister tones playing]
[narrator] It's summer 2021, and brothers Tymeir and Rodney
enjoy a day out with their family,
making social media videos at a water park.
[Pinkie] I have seven children.
Me and my kids did everything together.
Tymeir was three years older than Rodney.
For the most part, they got along,
but they was the typical brothers.
[Dayana] Tymeir always been like the clown,
like he always been funny.
[laughs]
Tymeir would make you laugh and smile all the time.
[kissing sounds]
[Dayana] Rodney, I call him like the aggravator.
He just like to mess with people.
I mean, we was a big family, so it was always fun.
[narrator] Tymeir Dial-Hale is born on January 2000,
but his parents separate soon after his birth.
Shortly after the pregnancy we kind of broke up,
and we never got back together. We just raised Tymeir together.
Tymeir was a happy-go-lucky little baby.
Like, he was --
he was a joy to have.
Everybody in my family loved Tymeir.
[Pinkie] He was a mama's boy. He was sweet.
My fifth child, Rodney, was born November the 8th of 2003.
I don't think it made a difference that they did not
have the same father,
because I feel like my kids grew up knowing
they had the same mother.
The boys fought.
My house was always loud,
because I had more boys than girls.
They argued, they disagreed,
and then they was right back playing together.
I feel like they was normal kids, and they loved each other,
but of course they had disagreements.
Tymeir's a good brother, he was a really good brother.
[Rondale] Like he wanted us to do the right thing,
and stay on the right path,
and just be, like, our best selves.
[Dayana] He was my little brother, but he was like a big brother.
He always been a protector.
[narrator] When Tymeir is 12, and Rodney is eight,
their family gets even bigger when Pinky gives birth
to her seventh child, Jeremiah.
[Pinkie] When I got pregnant with Jeremiah,
I think everybody was upset.
I think everybody was like,
"We don't want no more kids in here."
Tymeir and Jeremiah were buddies.
All of them was really pretty close though.
[narrator] But as Tymeir and Rodney become teenagers,
their lives start to go in very different directions.
[Marc] Rodney was always wanting to be tough.
Tymeir and Rodney was like total opposites.
Tymeir learned at a young age
that you gotta hustle to get money.
He would shovel snow, he would cut grass.
He never tried to go down the street-life road.
But for Rodney, he embraced that street life,
the street culture.
That was what he wanted for himself.
Tymeir always talked to me about how he would talk
to Rodney, and try to get him to turn his life around.
And he like, "Pops, he just ain't listening to me."
I'm like, "Ain't nothing you could do."
[Pinkie] Tymeir always tried to talk to Rodney about doing
the right things, but it went in one ear and out the other.
Once he got out of high school, he was determined.
And he would tell me every day, "Mom, I'm doing this for you.
You want me to have a diploma? I'm gonna get it."
[Marc] I was extremely happy when Tymeir graduated
from high school.
Rodney didn't really start misbehaving, until maybe
about fourth, fifth grade.
He didn't want to be in school,
and he was very disrespectful to teachers.
And by 12th grade, he just completely dropped out.
It was hard raising teenage boys all together,
but Rodney was definitely the one that
gave me the most problems.
[Dayana] As siblings growing up, when Rodney was at home,
he was a normal person.
We would all sing together.
I think Rodney put on a persona for the streets.
[Rondale] It's me, Rodney, and my friend.
This was around the time me and Rodney spent
a good amount of time together.
We used to go to the rec after school sometimes,
and just be kids.
I love that video.
It's me, [incomprehensible], and Rodney in that video.
Um, it was like a little TikTok trend.
It was funny.
That's another TikTok of me and Rodney
comparing, like, our features.
I had to force him to do it because people always said
that we looked alike a lot.
I don't really think Rodney had, like, any long-term goals.
I think he just lived day by day.
[Pinkie] Rodney couldn't keep a job because Rodney had did
so much bad things in the streets.
Rodney would shoot at people,
and people would shoot at Rodney.
Rodney was scared to go certain places,
because of who he might run into.
Tymeir worked with me at the market hall.
We were cleaning the building.
But when Tymeir came, he made it fun.
He would laugh.
He would be the highlight of everybody's day.
[Tymeir] Ah! [incomprehensible] Bit my finger!
[laughing]
This video was at my mom's house.
Tymeir was watching my kids that day,
and I had came back early,
and they was under the cover.
He was telling them a story.
[Tymeir and kids talking]
And I just started recording,
because I thought it was so cute.
He was a real, present uncle.
[Rondale] Tymeir's first impression was always good.
Even when my friends met him, they would just be like,
"Your brother's so nice. He's so sweet."
He was kind of flirtatious, too.
[Nina] When me and Tymeir first started chatting,
it was through Instagram.
Tymeir just started putting heart-eyes on my pictures,
telling me how beautiful I looked, and stuff like that.
And the messages, he was like, "You're cute."
And I'm like, "You're cute."
And he was -- I'm just like, let's be cute together.
We went on our first date in December of 2020.
We went bowling.
My first impression of Tymeir was that he was
really down to earth, like, a very caring man.
Tymeir described Rodney as his younger annoying brother
that he loved.
He would do anything for Rodney.
The first time that I got on the phone with Tymeir,
Rodney came into the room.
He pretty much did say, "Shut up, bitch," pretty much.
And I was just like, "Who are you talking to?
I don't have to shut up."
And Rodney told me, "I will beat the [bleep] out you."
Rodney was definitely one of them boys that I would say
I stayed away from.
Rodney loved guns.
He made it very clear that that was the life that he lived,
and the life that he loved to live.
You never know what a person could do.
[Marc] As he had gotten older, he was not a person you would
really want to be around.
Rodney didn't care about nobody but Rodney.
[Nina] I think the whole family felt as if Rodney
did have a problem.
I believe that if you mix with the wrong people,
bad things are gonna happen.
[Nina] Tymeir was working at a cleaning job
at the Market Hall, Shaker Heights, Ohio.
[car door clicks open]
I ended up going to his house, and meeting his mom,
and his family, and then we were inseparable.
[Pinkie] When Tymeir first met Nina, it was fast,
and she instantly moved in with us.
[Rondale] Nina became a part of our family.
I grew to love her like a sister.
Me and Tymeir, when we met, we started talking about kids
roughly like six months in. It was fast-paced.
When Tymeir found out I was pregnant, he was ecstatic.
[kissing sounds]
[Nina] He was phenomenal throughout the pregnancy.
Tymeir never missed a beat when it came to our child, ever.
He swore it was a boy. I knew it wasn't no boy.
And I looked at him, I said,
"You gonna cry when it's a girl."
[narrator] It's fall of 2021, and 21-year-old Tymeir,
and 19-year-old Nina throw a gender reveal party
for their family and friends.
[Dayana] We all just came out to see what he was having.
And he was determined to make sure that a truck had whatever
color powder come out.
[group chanting together]
[tires skid]
[screaming]
When the pink smoke came out, Tymeir was mad.
[laughs]
[crowd chatters]
[laughs]
And he made a comment, and he said, "That's OK, Nina.
We going to run it back."
[Marc] It was the funniest thing, because I was like,
"Dude, you don't pick your kids. Your kids pick you."
[Nina] Rodney didn't show up to the gender reveal,
but I think Tymeir understood that his brother
was in the streets, and not family oriented like him.
[Pinkie] Rodney just didn't care.
He just had this kind of like,
"I don't care if you like me or not" attitude.
[narrator] At only 18 years of age,
Rodney is also about to become a father.
[Pinkie] Rodney wasn't as excited as Tymeir was
to become a father.
Rodney was just, "Oh, it is what it is.
She's pregnant, you know."
Rodney's son's mother, they wasn't in a relationship.
I think Rodney probably wasn't as excited
because Rodney didn't have anything.
He didn't have a job.
I don't think Rodney was prepared to care for a child.
[Nina] Rodney was the type of person to get angry very quickly.
You say one little thing to him, and he's going
from 0 to 100 in a second.
When I was pregnant, Jeremiah and Rodney were
having a disagreement.
And Jeremiah was so much younger than him.
So I intervened.
And I did tell Rodney,
"Stop, that's your little brother."
Rodney did not like that.
Rodney got in my face, threatening me,
screaming in my face.
I was fearful of him...
because, for one, he's a man, and I'm pregnant.
And for two, the aggression,
the look in his eyes, he's angry.
I think Tymeir and him, they were cool after it.
You know, they're brothers.
I would never try to get between brothers.
I didn't talk to Rodney for a couple months.
Me and Tymeir decided that we wanted to move
into our own apartment, because, you know, it was time
we started our own family, begin our own life.
Me and Tymeir moved into my apartment October 15, 2021.
I went into labor with Nalani on February 15.
Tymeir was just there the whole time,
rubbing my back, talking me through it.
We did end up doing an emergency C-section.
He was there through it all.
Tymeir was the first person to hold her.
[Nina] First time that I seen Tymeir really cradle Nalani,
and really get in father mode, it warmed my heart.
He did most of the nurturing.
He did the most of the getting up in the middle of the night,
always made the bottles, changed the diapers,
because he knew that I was healing.
[Pinkie] Nalani loved her dad.
He was a wonderful, wonderful father.
[baby laughs]
[Marc] You should have seen him with her.
He was amazing.
Ah! [snorting sounds]
[laughs]
[Pinkie] Rodney's day would consist of sleeping the majority
of the day, and then going outside.
So when you got your child, you can't just sleep all day,
and then go outside.
I just don't believe Rodney was ready for a child.
Sometimes I would be like, you know, "Get him."
But he would get his son, and be so frustrated.
He didn't care what I said.
He was running with the wrong people.
[narrator] It's March 2022.
Tymeir and Rodney's younger brothers are driving
through the city at night.
[Nina] Tymeir's younger siblings, Rondale and Jeremiah,
were all in a car together with Rodney's girlfriend,
and the car was shot up.
[bang]
I looked back to check on Jeremiah.
I said, "Jeremiah, are you OK?"
But when I looked back, he was laying on the floor,
and he had blood on the back of his head.
At that point, I knew he was hurt,
but I just didn't know where.
So I called 911, and they came fast --
not even two minutes fast.
It was like five cop cars, and an ambulance.
They pulled him out the car, laid him on the ground,
cut his clothes off.
[Pinkie] Jeremiah was shot.
He was struck in his chest, and twice in his legs,
and he was grazed three times.
Jeremiah should have never had
to experience nothing like that.
I believe that they thought that Rodney was in that car,
and I believe that they maybe had a run-in prior to that,
and that was the outcome of it.
Jeremiah was 10 years old when he was shot.
He was in the hospital for a week,
but he was OK.
He didn't suffer any major damage.
Tymeir was really hurt by it,
and Rodney was really hurt by it,
because Rodney felt like...
it was for him.
He kept saying that he wished he'd have been in the car.
We always told Rodney, you need to put the gun down.
You need to do something better with your life.
[Nina] Tymeir definitely expressed to Rodney how he felt that...
he should try to change his life,
but Rodney just didn't want to hear it.
[Pinkie] Rodney was disrespectful.
He didn't care what I said.
No matter how much I...
chased him, no matter how much, he did not care at all.
[Nina] I feel as if Rodney was consistently putting
his whole family in danger.
Rodney was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.
[Rondale] As he got older, Rodney did become more violent.
I don't know what it was that made him become that way.
That image he had to portray, or if it was just really
who he was.
[Pinkie] I do think that sometimes
Rodney did think that Tymeir was my favorite child.
It's not that Tymeir was my favorite,
or that I love him more,
but he was a little bit more responsible.
[Dayana] Me and Rodney got into it at my mother's house.
It started over something petty, and he said that he was
going to go put his gun up, and come back downstairs,
and hit me.
And that's what happened.
Came downstairs and he hit me, so I hit him back.
[siren wailing]
I remember the police pulling up and they arrested both of us,
and we both was in jail together.
[Nina] When I found out that Rodney did put his hands on Dayana,
and they were both in jail,
I knew then that he didn't care about anything.
I knew then that he could harm someone.
I stayed away from Rodney for the most part
for a couple months.
I just felt like I didn't want me, or my baby, around that.
[narrator] But Tymeir is busy focusing on his career,
and providing for his family.
[Pinkie] Tymeir started working security at a school,
at a charter school.
He would come home every day with a story and he would just
be so excited about how he impacted some child's life.
[Marc] He was a security officer at the school with me.
He was a natural. Like, the kids loved him.
They really, truly loved Tymeir.
I believe that Rodney had some type of jealousy or envy.
I believe he was probably jealous of Tymeir
his whole life.
[Pinkie] Rodney got in a lot of trouble, but it's hard to just say,
"Oh, I give up on my child," because he is my child.
I guess I was just being a mother, and thought that that
was the right thing to do,
to just still love him regardless.
I think Rodney wanted my attention, so he would get
it any way, even if it was in a negative way.
[narrator] In July 2023, Wickliffe Police Department
received another 911 call about Rodney.
[dispatcher and woman on phone]
Rodney called me...
and asked me to come pick him up from a hotel.
Once I got close to the hotel, I seen a bunch of police cars.
And from what they said, he beat her up
in the hotel room.
Somebody called the police and said he had the gun.
[officer speaking]
[Pinkie] So the police stopped him,
and he didn't have the gun on him.
But they took him to jail, because she because she had
a knot on her head.
She was pregnant with his second child.
[officer speaking]
[Pinkie] It's really sickening to me that any man can be
violent to a woman.
He was arrested.
Rodney went to jail for about two days, and he was put on probation.
[Nina] For Rodney to actually put his hands on a woman that is
carrying a child, his child at that, was mind-boggling.
That's when I did start to see that Rodney was spiraling.
I started to see Rodney being more angrier, evil, mean.
I think Tymeir gave up on trying to tell Rodney
to be different.
[Pinkie] I thought if I move out of the neighborhood,
I could keep him from trouble.
Getting a new house and starting over,
it was hard finding a house because of Rodney.
Because it was like everywhere that I looked for a house,
Rodney would say, "I can't live there."
So Rodney said he had ops. That means he has enemies.
After, like, maybe a couple of months of searching
for a house, I'm at the point where I'm like,
"We going to be homeless in a minute if I keep on turning down houses."
So I just decided to take the house.
[narrator] Moving day arrives for Pinkie and her family.
[Pinkie] Tymeir left for work,
so we started packing the U-Haul.
But to me, Rodney was, like, a little off.
He would see a car, and he would be like,
"Who is that?"
Every time, so he was a little jumpy.
Probably about 3:30, 4:00, I dropped Rodney
off at the old house.
When I got back to the old house,
Tymeir and Nina was pulling up.
She said she had to work,
And I'm like, "I'll take the baby."
When I got to the new house,
Tymeir came with the air conditioner. It was fairly hot.
Tymeir said, "I'm going to take this air conditioner upstairs."
And Rodney says, "Don't take all that stuff upstairs.
You're wasting our time."
And Tymeir was like, "Stop talking to me."
He went upstairs.
They go back outside, and they're in the U-Haul.
But now they're arguing, like, like really arguing.
[ringing]
[dispatcher speaking]
[Pinkie screaming]
[dispatcher and caller speaking]
The 9-1-1 call came in on October 3, 2023 at 6:51 P.M.
[car dinging]
[car door shuts]
[Stephen] There's a lot of chaos going on.
There's screaming, there's crying, there's yelling.
We learned that a boy shot another boy.
[officer] Yeah, [incomprehensible]
[officer] OK, OK.
[Stephen] Victim was in dire straits.
They had recognized multiple gunshot wounds.
He was not conscious.
[officers speaking]
[Michael] Yeah.
[Stephen] The first person the officer encountered
is the victim's mother.
The first thing that she conveyed to that officer,
was that one of her sons had just shot her other son
in front of her.
[officer and Pinkie speaking]
[Stephen] We learned that the suspect in this case
was 19 years old, that our victim's name was
Tymeir Dial-Hale, and that he was 23 years old.
When I got the call from my mom, and she was
screaming on the phone, saying, "Rodney killed Tymeir."
And when I got there, Tymeir was laying on the ground
in the neighbor's front yard.
[narrator] As Tymeir is rushed to University Hospital,
family members arrive at the scene.
When Pinkie called me, everything just started going
like fireworks in my brain.
Is my baby father alive?
Did he kill his brother in front of my child?
Did he harm my child?
My daughter was with some woman that lived on the same street.
They had said, "Tymeir had a pulse."
So we were all hopeful. You know, I was just praying.
[Marc] When I get there, yelling at the police, like,
"Where's my son? Where's my son?"
The police was like,
"We took him to University Hospital."
I jumped back in the car, and I sped off.
I just remember falling on my knees praying to God.
Then we got the call that he was gone.
He one of the good ones. Why would you take him?
[Nina] I wasn't ready. I was shocked.
I couldn't believe that Rodney...
was the person who took him.
[Stephen] Unfortunately, Tymeir was declared deceased at 7:43 P.M.
And almost immediately after that declaration,
the page goes out for the homicide unit to respond.
When the homicide unit arrived, we do a walkthrough through
the crime scene.
We discovered that there was a shell casing
inside the moving van,
and there was multiple shell casings outside,
along with a blood trail that led from the moving van
to the final resting place of Tymeir.
[officer and Pinkie speaking]
[Nina crying]
[narrator] Police speak to Pinkie to find out what actually happened.
[Pinkie] It was unbelievable.
I'm standing right next to Tymeir and Rodney says,
"I don't fight. I shoot."
He just...
pulled a gun out and shot him.
[bang]
[Pinkie] He shot him in his shoulder.
It was unbelievable.
Tymeir face went from, "I don't think he would shoot me,"
to, "I can't believe he shot me."
Now Nalani is screaming,
and Tymeir turns to jump off the U-Haul.
So I go to try to,like, grab Rodney, but he jumped too.
But as he's jumping, he shot three times.
[bang]
When I finally did see Tymeir,
he was laying on his back in the grass,
and he would just kept saying, "Okay, okay, bro."
Basically begging for his life. And Rodney shot him.
And now, my mind is telling me
to grab Rodney.
But then, my body was, like, running toward Tymeir.
Tymeir flipped his body over.
[voice breaking] So now, he's laying on his stomach.
[bang]
[Pinkie] And he shot him three more times.
[bang]
Rodney turned, like, to me.
And I ran around the other side of the U-Haul,
because I felt like he would shoot me.
He was running down the street,
and I laid on the ground next to Tymeir,
and he died in my face.
[Stephen] We learned that the victim's one-year-old daughter
was on scene and present during this incident,
which adds to the tragic nature of this case.
We all have families, we all have kids.
I have four kids and seven grandkids,
and you immediately start thinking --
[breathes deep]
[sniffs]
[voice breaking] You...
think about your family.
[sobbing]
This family has seen a lot of tragedy at the hands
of this individual, and it was imperative
that we got him in custody
as quickly and as safely as possible.
[officer and Pinkie speaking]
She was able to give us a couple of locations
where Rodney may have fled to.
She didn't know the address, but she provided a screenshot
of a map that may be the location, or the area
that he fled to.
That information was immediately disseminated
to the officers out on the street.
[Pinkie and officer speaking]
So after we leave the scene, we try to learn as much
as we can about Rodney Curlee Jr.
[sirens]
[narrator] Police know Rodney is armed and dangerous.
[Pinkie] I thought maybe Rodney would come back to the house,
and I was the only witness.
You know, I was the only person that could really say he was
the person who did this.
He had already killed his brother, so it was like,
if you would kill your brother,
you're capable of killing anybody else.
[narrator] A week after Tymeir's death,
his brother, Rodney Curlee Jr., remains at large.
[Pinkie] When they interviewed us on the news, I basically just
wanted to tell Rodney to turn himself in so that not only
would he be safe, but other people would be safe as well.
[Marc] He killed my son.
I was out looking for him every single night.
We were looking for him to be captured,
apprehended, or killed,
dead or alive, I don't care how you bring him in.
[narrator] On October 20th, 2023,
family and friends say goodbye to their beloved Tymeir.
[Pinkie] The funeral was packed. It was just a lot of people.
[Marc] Man, the whole city, the whole community came out.
Like, it was amazing.
[voice breaking] The hardest part was seeing
him in the casket, because it's like,
once they bury you, you're gone forever.
It was hard to deal with that.
It was hard giving him my last kiss.
[narrator] On November 16, investigators make
a breakthrough in their hunt for Rodney.
[Stephen] Rodney was found to be hiding out in a house
in the city of East Cleveland.
[siren wailing]
[Stephen] As soon as Rodney understood that the K-9 unit
was coming in the house, he came out of the basement
and gave himself up.
Less than two hours after the fugitive unit arrested Rodney,
he was in the interview room with Detective Legg.
So Curlee was claiming self-defense.
He was claiming that our victim, Tymeir,
had a gun on him, which there was
zero evidence of, and zero history of, by the way.
[Stephen] Then he was claiming that there was a tussle
over his gun, you know, between the two of them.
Mr. Curlee was, you know, forgetting at some point
that his mother was standing right next to him when
this was going on.
The medical examiner's office determined that Tymeir
had 16 gunshot wound defects in his body,
and it was labeled a homicide.
He didn't seem in any way, shape, or form remorseful.
He was in self-preservation mode.
Mr. Curlee wanted to blame everybody but himself.
[narrator] Rodney is indicted on charges
of aggravated murder, murder, involuntary manslaughter,
felonious assault, and aggravated menacing.
[Pinkie] I didn't want to have to subject me or my other
children to testifying.
A trial would have been unfair,
because Rodney knew what he did.
[narrator] The defense requests a plea of ten to 12 years.
As a mother of both of them, I felt like 10 to 12 years
wasn't fair, because he killed his brother.
So I told the prosecutor not to tell me any plea deals
if it wasn't over 20 years.
Just take what your punishment, and take accountability.
[narrator] Rodney pleads guilty to involuntary manslaughter with a firearm,
two counts of felonious assault with a firearm,
and aggravated menacing.
[Pinkie] When I got there, I couldn't breathe.
So all I could really get out was a couple of words.
[Pinkie] I didn't know how to do what everybody wanted me to do.
I felt like maybe if he felt my pain from my words,
it would hit him that this is reality.
I believe that that was when he realized that he had
destroyed his family.
He genuinely apologized in that moment.
Now, if it was genuine, I don't know, but in that moment
it felt genuine.
I couldn't tell him I hated him.
I couldn't, because I don't. I don't hate him.
I hate what he did.
This is my victim impact statement that I didn't get
an opportunity to read to the judge,
in front of the monster that was sitting in the court.
"I'm here for my son, who was the best child
"you could ask for. He was loved by everyone.
"The only enemy he had in life was in his own household.
What the killer did to me was rip my heart out."
[narrator] Rodney is sentenced to 23 to 28 years in prison.
Rodney absolutely committed a monstrous act.
There's nothing worse than killing your brother in front
of your mother, in my opinion.
[Marc] I cry every day. The hurt.
Everybody in my family is devastated by this.
[Pinkie] Tymeir was everything to me. Tymeir was my best friend.
I miss everything about Tymeir.
I don't forgive Rodney.
[Nina] I would tell Rodney,
if I could talk to him right now,
"You took...
"my daughter's father away.
"[voice shaking] You stole him from her.
"I wish you could have just walked away.
You didn't care about anybody but yourself."
[group singing] Happy Birthday to you!
[Nina] Tymeir made his mark on everybody.
He was a real leader in man form.
I don't think that I'll ever meet anyone like Tymeir.
[sinister music]
[child] Daddy!
He was extremely attentive with her.
Things started to unravel.
The interviewer asked him to draw pictures of what he saw.