Worst Neighbor Ever (2026) s01e03 Episode Script

1
[slow dramatic music playing]
[woman] We fell in love with the house
and the neighborhood.
It was like everything we hoped for,
but everything changed.
[dramatic music playing]
[dispatcher speaking]
[man speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[man speaking]
The signs were all there
that it was gonna turn into a problem.
[man speaking]
No one knew how serious
those threats were.
[glass shatters]
He just kept coming back.
[man speaking]
That's when all hell broke loose.
[man speaking]
[mellow music playing]
[woman] Miles and I, we chose our home
for a very specific reason.
When you think of buying
a first home, you're like,
"I wanna be in a neighborhood
where I can go next door
and get rice or sugar."
Where our kids could play outside
or in the front yard in the street
with our neighbor's kids
and grow up and grow old together.
And we wanted to be
in a community of color.
And so we moved into
the Eastmont Hills area.
[man] Eastmont and Eastmont Hills
is a unique neighborhood.
It's like middle-class middle-class.
People from San Francisco were like,
"Hey, Eastmont Hills
is a sought-out area."
"Let's start moving
into this neighborhood."
Moving from an apartment
to actually having a home,
it's not in the worst neighborhood,
it's not in the best neighborhood.
And that's where
Miles and Melina moved in.
[Melina] October 2017, we closed
escrow on our house, moved in,
blended our family.
Miles and his three kids,
and then myself
and my one daughter, Isabella.
Our immediate neighbors,
and some across the street,
were families that had been
in the homes 20-plus years.
[Matt] My home's across the street
from Miles and Melina's house.
Eastmont was blue collar,
people who go to work every day,
firefighters, a lot of immigrant families
lived in our neighborhood.
Everybody kind of hung out together.
[Jose] Miles and Melina lived across
from my house.
We liked the neighborhood
because it seemed pretty quiet.
It looked like a very tight community.
That's what we were mainly looking for.
[Bonnie] Miles definitely saw
potential in this home.
It was a corner lot.
It was a nice size lot.
He felt that within a few years,
they would be able to sell the house
and move on up.
Miles is my only child, my only son.
So I would challenge him sometimes
because the neighborhood
did not seem safe to me.
[upbeat music playing]
[Melina] Miles and I met at work in May,
2013, when I started with Wells Fargo.
I was the top salesperson.
Miles had been at that
particular banking center for 11 years.
He completely reminded me of my family
and families from the East Coast,
from New York.
Miles was a 1000% New Yorker.
He's the life of the party.
He talked to everybody.
Even if you didn't want to,
he'd talk to you.
He was that guy that
stands at the checkout line
and talks to the checker
and makes the checker respond.
[Toni] I first met Melina
in church in 2011.
I was like the protective little sister.
Melina, myself, and two other women
were in a group chat
and we chatted all day.
Melina had mentioned
that she met a guy at work
and she thinks she really likes him.
Melina mentioned Miles
probably every other day.
So I'd be like, "Okay."
I'd send her eye roll emojis.
Happy 100th birthday, Grandma,
from your favorite grandson.
Miggity, miggity, Miles.
[shouts]
Yeah.
Miles says what's on the top of his mind.
He's the joker in the deck.
He's just an interesting cat.
Like the guy went to boarding school,
is heavily, like, pro-Oakland, pro-Black.
Like, he's just all of those things.
He just has a built-in confidence
that is unrivaled.
And extremely humble.
[Melina] I hadn't really dated
since my first divorce to Isabella's dad.
I was a single mom.
And so I knew that my standards were
pretty high on what I wanted.
Definitely wanted a man of faith.
Diversity was huge for me.
A love of sports was a really big deal.
And serving your community.
So Miles just literally felt like
the puzzle piece that was missing.
Summer of 2017,
we kind of got into one of those,
"What are we doing here?"
type of conversations.
And then two months later,
we bought a house and moved in together
and then went to Vegas and got married.
Our home, it's a beautiful
1929 Tudor home.
It had all of the things
that I wanted in a home.
Original fireplace with,
like, plaster carvings,
original wood floors.
We fell in love with the house.
I remember we bought each kid
a stuffed animal and a card
and we put it on the fireplace mantel.
We were excited about doing life together.
[dramatic music playing]
Shortly after moving in,
we met our neighbors,
our direct neighbors to the left,
the Thomas family.
It was mom and dad
and then their two adult sons.
They just seemed like
a hardworking older couple.
Patricia and Walter
raised their two sons there.
They had been renting that house
for close to 30 years.
And so it was Walter Jr.
who was their first-born.
And then Jamal, also known as JT.
JT lived in
the detached garage behind the house.
[Terell] I remember Miles telling me
they were just meeting their neighbors
and they thought they were really cool.
He felt very secure knowing, like,
people that were in the neighborhood
had been there for a very long time.
I would see his mom, like, come and go,
and she was always very sweet.
Her hair was always done.
She was always well-dressed,
well-kept, very polite.
She would roll down
her window from the driveway
and say hello and goodbye.
JT was always around
or always walking around
because he didn't work
and was just kind of out
and about hanging out.
And if he came to the door
or if he came near the house,
it's because he was looking for Miles.
So he'd always be like,
"Hi, is Miles there?"
Or, "Can you tell Miles I'm outside,
come talk to me?"
He was always cordial, always polite.
If Miles was outside doing lawn work,
he'd be like,
"Can I help you for a couple bucks?"
And Miles would give him a couple bucks.
JT was definitely of that neighborhood.
That was his safety net,
was people from the neighborhood.
[tense music playing]
[Melina] It was August, 2019.
And we started seeing the Thomas family
placing a lot of furniture
on the sidewalk by their home.
Because Miles is who he is,
he went on over there and was like,
"Hey, what's going on?"
And Patricia got very teary-eyed
and was very heavy-hearted
and said the owner of the home
that they lived in had died.
And now the kids were selling
all the estates in the trust.
"So therefore, we just got evicted."
She shared that she was going
to stay at a friend's house,
but she wasn't sure what her sons
were going to do at that point just yet.
I was sad hearing about the circumstances.
That didn't feel great.
Once the Thomas family moved out
and the house was off the market,
Miles met the new owners, saw new people.
So he went and introduced himself
to the new people.
They shared they were
just flipping the house
and the house would probably
just be on hold until the springtime.
It was about two months after they had
moved out and the house had been sold
that we saw J
kind of going into the house
through the driveway
and sleeping in the garage again.
And I was like, "What is he doing there?"
I started noticing Jamal
going to his previous house.
I would see him sneak in his backyard.
He was squatting.
At some point, the new owners
did see, like, JT's mattress and some bags
in the back house where he was staying.
And then they noticed
that the fence that they had put up
had been, like, taken down.
And Miles confirmed for them,
"Yeah, sometimes we see J
who used to live here."
They were like, "If you see him
or if there's anything going on,
let us know,
because no one should be
staying on that property."
And they started to try to board up
the back where he was sleeping.
And then I think that's when he got mad.
We assumed he was gonna leave,
but he didn't because
Thanksgiving was the first night
that we had an incident with him.
[people laughing and chatting]
We had just set the table
and sat down for dinner
with my mom and my aunt.
[banging intensely]
[Melina] And then someone started
banging and kicking the front door.
When I opened the door, it was JT.
He was slurring,
but he was, like,
very angry and very upset.
It's like JT was there,
but he was not there.
We had never seen him that way,
which then led us to immediately believe
he must be under the influence.
And it's just like,
"Your dog is bothering me."
And he was talking about
our big dog, Macho.
And he was like, "He's banging
on the walls and he's disrupting me."
And Miles was like,
"Well, no, because first of all,
he's not in the backyard right now."
"Second of all,
you're not supposed to be here."
"You don't live here anymore."
And so they exchanged more words.
And then Miles was just like,
"Get off my property."
Miles and I feel bad for him.
His whole life just fell apart.
They got evicted from their home.
He has nowhere to go.
It seemed like a perfect storm for him.
And then sometime around
two, three o'clock in the morning,
the doorbell started ringing.
[doorbell ringing]
Banging and kicking on the door.
And then we both startled
and rolled out of bed.
We ran to the front door.
No one was there.
But we saw on the camera that it was JT.
This is crazy. What is happening?
And that was the first incident.
After the Thanksgiving night,
he came back again…
[banging]
…banging and kicking on the door
and ringing the doorbell.
[doorbell ringing]
Every night, anytime
between midnight before sunrise.
[banging and ringing]
And, naturally, it was
traumatizing for the kids.
It scared the crap out of them.
They can't go back to sleep,
don't want to sleep in their room,
don't want to sleep at all.
[Matt] Melina wanted to call the police,
but Miles said,
"Let's pray for the brother.
He's having a hard time."
He knew the guy was
not right in the head and was on drugs,
but he still gave him
the benefit of the doubt.
[Jose] I started noticing
the difference with Jamal.
I would see him one day
and he would be totally fine.
And then I've noticed other days
he would probably be drugged out.
I would see him either talk to himself
or pretty much under the influence.
[Bonnie] Miles just tried
to talk some sense into him,
but he didn't know what to do.
[Melina] We had no idea at that point
what was wrong with J
and why he was angry with us.
Early December, I remember
it was getting dark at like five o'clock.
Miles was not home.
I had just sat down
on the couch in the living room
and turned on the television.
And then I just heard…
[glass shatters]
The window behind me
completely, like, shattered
on me, the glass.
I started screaming
for the kids to go into the basement.
My kids are screaming and crying.
They grabbed Macho
and they ran into the basement.
And I looked down, and my hands
were just, like, dripping of blood.
I ran to the front door
and hit the panic alarm
on our alarm system.
It felt like forever
before the police arrived.
[sirens blaring]
Seven or eight cop cars showed up.
And all they kept saying was,
"Ma'am, we're shots fired?"
And I was just like, "I don't know."
A lot of cops were walking around with
all of the lights and the flashlights.
And so that's when
they found the boulder rocks.
And they were like,
"Okay, it's not gunshot."
"Someone threw rocks through the window."
I had automatically assumed it was JT.
But there's no cameras here.
The camera's at the front door.
They were like,
"We understand your concerns,
but, basically, if you didn't see him
and we don't have camera footage
that actually was him,
then we can't assume it was him."
Great, thanks.
[Jules] That shook everything.
This is a game changer.
You throwing rocks in windows?
And we're not talking about
a little bathroom window.
We're like, "Man,
you could see into the living room."
"You're targeting people."
[Melina] Miles knew what was going on
because the alarm called him.
Then he pulls up to his house
and it's full of police cars.
And so when he walked in,
I could, like, see the fear in his eyes.
I know he definitely felt helpless.
And at that point was like, "How serious
and how severe is this situation?"
Miles was super adamant
I needed to go to the hospital
to make sure that everything was fine.
No one knew, but we were
eight or nine weeks pregnant.
It was super early on.
So we were definitely terrified.
And we just didn't know
what to do from there.
[Jules] Miles was like, "I'm not
playing games with this dude anymore."
"If he's gonna attack me,
I'm gonna make it very clear
that a line has been drawn in the sand."
But going into 2020,
it became very clear
that JT was not gonna stop
until some serious damage happened.
[upbeat tense music playing]
[doorbell ringing incessantly]
[Melina] Towards the end of December,
there was ding-dong-ditch that continued,
it felt like, forever, into January.
We confirmed it was him
because of our door camera bell.
We'd be like, "Call the police."
When the police did arrive
or respond to the call,
JT would naturally
have been gone for hours already.
The police at that point
would just be like, "Okay."
They're just basically taking notes.
[man] They told her,
"If you think it was Jamal,
why don't you get in contact with
the property owner where he's squatting?"
"Maybe you can have them evict
or get Jamal off the premises
and that'll essentially
resolve the situation."
[Jules] So Miles starts
to have a conversation
with the owner of the house.
He's like, "Yo, whoever owns this property
is responsible for JT,
and I can't deal with him."
And that night, it escalates,
where the owner of the house
chased JT down the street
while Miles is there.
He's like, "I'm gonna stop you
from coming over here."
So JT was displaced.
And I think at that time,
the owner and Miles became synonymous.
And he was just like, "You are
going to be the target of my wrath."
[Matt] For some reason,
JT thought with his whole heart
that Miles was harassing him.
[Melina] Miles at that point was like,
"I'm just gonna have to guard
the house at night and stay watch."
And so that's what he started doing,
sitting on the porch
with Macho, our boxer.
[Matt] I seen Miles come outside
and he had a baseball bat
laying on his shoulder,
with, like, sweatpants on
and white sneakers.
He was trying to handle something
that was out his comfort zone.
And I knew he wasn't street tough,
that's the big reason I got involved.
The whole time
I was brushing it off as like,
"It's just drama with this idiot.
We'll get him run off,
then the problem's solved."
But it never happened.
[dramatic music playing]
[upbeat music playing]
[man] The police were made
aware by the Armsteads that
Jamal would continuously
harass both Miles and Melina.
[Melina] As we kept calling the police,
all they said was,
"One of the things you could do
is get a restraining order."
"If you have a restraining order,
when we get a call and you say,
'I have a restraining order against
this person and they're on my property,'
we'll move faster."
[woman] So did this
restraining order help?
No.
We would call,
sometimes it would be hours later.
Sometimes it would be the next day
where they finally get here.
[Matt] We live a block from
the Oakland PD headquarters.
So this is all going on
right around the corner, two blocks away.
-[Isabella] I did it.
-[Melina] You did it.
-[boy] It's too cold, I'm not doing it.
-You conquered it.
[Melina] Turn around
so we can take a picture.
Conquered the rock.
Miles and Melina shouldered everything
that was happening very well.
They weren't in the house 24-7
waiting for JT or anything like that.
[people cheering]
They still lived their life
as they normally would.
[Melina] Even in the midst of everything
that Jamal was doing horrible to us,
there were glimpses of joy.
During that time, our friends
Jules and Lonnie felt the urge
that they wanted to open
and start a church in Oakland.
Miles was like, "I'm tied in, sign me up."
God is in our corner fighting for us.
TFH Oakland is a church that's
in your corner fighting with you.
[Melina] We launched January 26th, 2020.
There was about a little bit over
800 people at the first service.
It grounded us
and felt really full of,
like, love and joy.
The church launch came at this time
where everything was going off with JT.
So we're trying to do exactly
what we said we would do as a church,
be family, support Miles and Melina.
I think all of us,
we were under the impression
like, "Hey, it's all gonna work out."
It was quite an exciting few weeks
before the world shut down, and COVID.
One day, Miles arrived home.
He got into an argument with JT,
then grabs the baseball bat
that he always had with him
and was outside verbally fighting with JT…
[man] Don't run, turn around,
hands behind your back.
[Melina] …when the patrol car showed up.
We have a restraining order, he's not
supposed to be anywhere near us.
-[man] Anything that can cut or poke me?
-[Jamal] No.
[Miles] I see you threatening me
right now, motherfucker.
You better not fuck with me.
-[man] He didn't say anything.
-[Miles] He was saying--
-[man] No, he didn't. Go over there!
-[Miles] He was saying shit to me.
[man] How many times
I gotta tell you guys to separate?
Grown ass men!
Can't listen to simple instructions.
This was the one time that
the police actually showed up
when JT was still there.
[man] Jesus Christ, get in the car.
Acting like 12-year-old girls,
both of you guys.
Jesus, get in the car.
As opposed to separating the two
and then arresting Mr. Thomas,
instead the officers
made light of the situation
and essentially trivialized
the trial of terror
that this family had been going through.
[Melina] The look on JT's face
when the cop was, like, scolding Miles
was like, "Ha, ha, ha."
Literally, like a child.
[Adante] Officers finally
arrested Jamal Thomas.
During the course of taking him
into custody, he gives an ominous warning.
[Jamal] Guess what, guys,
I'll be right back.
Next time, I'm gonna kill him next time.
[Adante] As a result,
he was arrested for what we call
criminal threats or terrorist threats.
[Jules] Miles calls us and he's like,
"Hey, JT's in jail."
"So, man, to God be the glory.
We did it you guys."
"All of this prayer, it worked."
And then,
JT comes riding through
the street on a bike.
And everybody's like, "Why is JT out?"
[Adante] Jamal Thomas was arrested,
but released just two days later.
The Armstead family
received no notification.
So unbeknownst to them,
Jamal Thomas was back on the street.
[Butch] Jamal Thomas at that point
was on probation,
which should have been
another factor for the court to consider
in refusing to release him.
[Adante] This is a person who was already
on the highest level
of supervised probation.
And if he were to be arrested,
that probation officer
was supposed to be notified
and Jamal Thomas was supposed to be held
until the case took its final course.
That did not happen.
[Butch] During COVID, it was a time of,
everybody gets out of jail.
Bails were repeatedly being reduced to $1
because of the fear
that people are gonna die in jail.
[Toni] That's when JT became
more emboldened in his threats,
basically in his acts.
He probably figured,
"They're not gonna arrest me."
"Or if I do get arrested,
I'll get released right away."
[glass shatters]
[Melina] I feel like after that time,
windows kept breaking
every other night for quite some time.
[glass shatters]
[Matt] They tried plexiglass,
which he just then got
bigger rocks to put through the window.
He even hit the attic windows with rocks.
[glass shatters]
And it was like every other day
he was over there putting a window out.
[Adante] Miles actually reached out
to Jamal Thomas's probation officer
to report all of the things
that he had done in violation of the law.
The probation officer did not immediately
send officers out to arrest Jamal Thomas
or even to find Jamal Thomas.
In fact, the probation officer hadn't
heard from Jamal Thomas in weeks.
[Melina] March 28th,
we had all the kids that day.
The kids were setting the table.
I was serving dinner.
And then I hear Miles's son yell,
"It's JT! He's outside.
He's across the street."
And then he saw me directly
and just chucked
a huge rock at the window.
[glass shatters]
And it came, like, straight through.
It was clear that
he was trying to hurt us.
Being further along in the pregnancy,
it was in that moment that I realized
one of us could actually
be hurt in this situation.
We called the police again.
Miles was like, "What are you gonna do?
To me, that's assault."
Also, JT, he hadn't lived there
in over five months at this point.
He was just lingering in the neighborhood.
We're having a pattern with this man
and he's getting more aggressive.
But the police,
they've never even looked for him.
There were moments
where Miles asked us to do stakeouts.
We sat in the car
and Miles sat on the porch with his dog.
[Melina] It started becoming like
every night they were there.
I would go to sleep
and he would go to the porch.
Matt would come out
and sit with him for a while.
Miles wasn't sleeping.
He was just so anxious,
and I could feel he just felt trapped.
His anxiety was through the roof
dealing with the constant, "What next?"
Anytime JT just felt like tormenting him,
he could and would
without fear of repercussion.
[glass shatters]
[Adante] Despite all
that Jamal Thomas had done,
despite all the danger that he posed,
they wanted to keep the home
that they fell in love with
in the community
that they were committed to.
[Melina] The windows, in a total,
were broken 23 times.
It started getting to the point
where we were getting them fixed
and then the person that was
fixing them for us was like,
"Are we sure you want to fix them?"
At one point, one of the police
told us that our beat
was the busiest in Oakland
and had the highest crime.
And so basically, our calls for support
were the least of their concerns,
when there was shootings or robberies.
[Bonnie] There was no stopping JT.
He had a vendetta against my son.
[glass shatters]
[Melina] April 6th,
I heard the glass break.
I looked up
and a good old, red fireplace… red brick
came flying through the window
and, like, almost hit Miles,
and then landed on his laptop
and broke his laptop.
I looked at the window,
and JT was just standing there.
At this point,
we boarded up all of the windows.
It just felt like
he's becoming more unhinged.
[Matt] Their house looked like
a crack house by the time they were done.
Every window in their house
was covered with plywood.
[Melina] It was dark.
It felt unfair.
There was also COVID.
You're trapped in your house,
can't go anywhere.
It was not how I had envisioned
getting ready to prep
and welcome a new baby.
[dramatic music playing]
[Jules] Now it's like they are being
held hostage in their home.
You're just at the disposal of somebody
that can just inflict pain,
not only on you, but also your kids.
[Melina] At that point, I started
freaking out a little bit.
One, because J
was saying more often than not
that he was gonna burn down the house.
We both kind of felt like,
"Well, but wait,
we can't see him coming now,"
because we boarded the windows
to protect us from the glass."
And so it was the fear of, like,
being burned alive in your own house
that we were just like, "What do we do?"
And that was it.
I was ready to go at that point.
[Bonnie] Miles had done
everything that he could do
and he was at wit's end.
And finally he said, "We have to move.
We don't have a choice."
"I have to protect my family."
[emotional music playing]
[Jules] The game plan was
to find an apartment,
a place of safety.
JT won't know where you're at.
[Melina] We had reached out to friends
to help us do some updates.
Jose and another one
of our neighbors, Jesús,
started helping Miles
with landscaping and, like, painting,
trying to get the house ready to be sold.
Next thing I knew,
Melina was sending me a picture
of the kids in the living room,
closing up boxes.
[Melina] The apartment that we moved into
just had this,
like, really calm peacefulness.
I remember being up
really early in the morning with Miles.
And I remember him saying,
"This feels like the best move ever."
Like, we didn't intend it,
we tried not to have it happen,
but we were both so relieved
and we felt so much peace.
And the kids just felt
like ten times happier.
We were almost out.
We were out.
[dramatic music playing]
[Melina] The morning of May 1st,
I was actually annoyed with Miles.
We had a little bit
of an argument the day before.
And so that morning I was very quiet
and intentionally cold-shouldered him.
He packs up to leave the house
and he comes to give me a kiss goodbye.
And I like shunned him
and didn't kiss him goodbye
because I was annoyed.
And he was like,
"Okay, I love you anyways."
And I was like, "Whatever, bye."
And he left.
So, I went into a meeting
and then he was texting me.
"Jesús and Jose are
pretty much done with the fence,
we need more paint
so I'm gonna go back to Home Depot,
need to buy more paint.
Then I'll be done, be home."
And I was like, "Great."
And then he just stopped texting.
[Jose] That day we were
helping him paint his house.
We were working on gardening.
While we were digging up holes,
I saw Miles walking to his van.
Then he's like, "Jose, look."
"Look who's here."
And I turned around,
I gave a little quick glance.
Then I saw Jamal standing
right in the middle of the street.
[music intensifies]
Miles screamed, "He has a gun!"
But right when he screamed,
Jamal pulled out a gun out of his waist.
And then… [gun cracks]
I heard the first gunshot.
First thing I did, I grabbed my daughter,
put her under my shirt
so she wouldn't be able
to see what's going on.
I stood still
so I wouldn't catch his attention.
I was sitting in the living room
with my infant on my lap
and my teenage daughter.
And we were playing Call of Duty
when I heard gunshots.
[gun cracking]
So I looked out the window
and I watched J
unload a pistol towards the ground.
I grew up around guns, plus I was in
the military. Guns don't really scare me.
So I screamed for the kids to get down.
I had my daughter
run downstairs with my infant
and I ran outside to try to catch JT.
Because I originally thought
he was just shooting the house up.
[phone dialing]
[dispatcher speaking]
[Matt speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[Matt speaking]
[baby crying]
[dispatcher speaking]
[Matt speaking]
[Matt] I saw Miles laying there
and stopped to run back
to try to help him.
And I looked at Miles
and he wasn't shaking.
He wasn't breathing. He wasn't convulsing.
He wasn't gasping.
He was just still.
And then I knew he was dead.
[emotional music playing]
He was a nice guy. That was the thing.
Even for people that were mean to him,
he was nice to 'em.
That's the part I hate.
He prayed for his own killer.
[Melina] I was sitting
at my desk working, and…
I'm sure never in my life
have I ever felt a feeling
the way that I felt.
It was like for a quick moment,
he was there.
And I felt him so close.
And he felt, like, so far.
And then I just started bawling, crying.
And it was the weirdest experience.
And I just had, like, this panic.
And then I called. And I kept calling.
And he wasn't a texter,
but he always picked up my phone calls.
And he didn't pick up.
And so I, like, literally waddle
all the way back to the bedroom
and I'm, like, putting clothes on.
And I'm like, "I have to go to the house.
I have to find him. Something's wrong."
I literally took a five-minute drive.
And I get down to the stop sign,
and I look and I'm…
There's a coroner's van.
There's yellow tarp. [sniffs]
And there's caution tape
from my house to the stop sign,
like, everywhere.
And I see Miles' car.
And I'm like, what is happening?
And so I get out of the car
and I'm looking at all of the police cars.
And I'm just like, where's Miles?
And I'm looking at the coroner van
on the curb of my house.
And I'm looking at clearly
what's my husband's body
under this yellow tarp.
I'm looking at all of the cops
that I feel like I've seen their faces
over and over and over again for months.
And I'm just like, "How many of you
saw him tormenting us forever?"
It felt like. And no one did anything.
Like, no one,
just no one did anything. [sniffs]
On May 1st, I was in the backyard,
and when I came in, I saw on my phone
that Melina had called me.
So I called back,
and she answered the phone, hysterical.
I could not understand
what she was saying.
Someone took the phone
and said very loud and very clearly,
"Your son was shot multiple times
and he's dead."
I think that I was in
a state of shock and disbelief.
I was more concerned about his kids
than I was about how I was feeling.
How were they going to survive?
[Toni] It was like, they were moving.
They were getting away from the situation.
And he was just there to what?
Plant some flowers,
to make the house pretty, you know?
[dramatic music playing]
[Adante] After Jamal Thomas
shot and killed Miles
in front of the family home,
police actually sprung into action.
Seven to eight hours later,
they were able to track
Jamal Thomas down by pinging his phone.
Technology that was available
to the police the entire time,
but one that they never apparently used
in order to stop his reign of terror.
[Butch] The police located Jamal Thomas
at the Holiday Motel on MacArthur,
which isn't that far from
where the murder actually happened.
They traveled there
and arrested Jamal Thomas there.
[soft music playing]
[Jules] On May 5th,
we all go to their house
and we start finishing the work
that Miles had started
to sell the house.
What's up?
From washing dishes, raking bark,
painting the basement floor.
Yeah, everybody's working.
Showing love for their own spirits.
Just trying to pick up
where Miles left off.
That was probably the only time
that we didn't feel helpless.
-[baby crying]
-[Bonnie] Aww!
Don't cry. Nana's here. Don't cry.
[Toni] Two months after we lost Miles,
Melina gave birth to baby girl Ava.
[Bonnie] Ava.
It was a happy moment in the midst of
everything that was going on emotionally.
The only thing that I prayed for
was for her to have his eyes.
Miles had these
beautiful light brown eyes.
Looked kind of golden sometimes.
Ava was born cesarean,
and I remember when
they showed her to me over the screen…
I noticed immediately.
I was like, "You have his eyes."
She had the light golden brown eyes.
And that makes me feel like,
"Okay, Lord, you know what you're doing."
[Bonnie] Say, "I'm here, everybody."
[Melina] Miles' kids had moved out,
back in with his first wife.
So it's just me and my girls.
All I kept telling myself was,
"Do it for Miles."
He used to say,
"Chin up, buttercup," to me.
And so I feel like I would
always hear that in my head.
Like, "Chin up, buttercup."
So for him, I'm going to keep going.
[dramatic music playing]
I think I was with the prosecutors
within a couple days in the DA's office.
I was like,
"Someone needs to be held accountable,
and I need my kids to see
that justice can be served
and served the right way."
[Butch] There was no question
that Jamal Thomas had done this.
And that Miles was completely innocent.
So I charged him with
murder in the first degree.
The system had let this family down.
And so then I wanted
to make sure I did what I could
to make sure we didn't let them down.
[Melina] Miles should have never died
the way that he died.
Our family was failed in a way
that no family should be failed.
I don't care how short-staffed you are,
if I call 911,
I expect you to show up at my door.
And so my goal was that
it would be made very clear to the public
how the police unfortunately
failed our family at this time
and that they would never
do it to another family again.
[Bonnie] Melina fought for everything.
She went to bat for Miles all the way.
And one of the things that she did
was that she sought a civil suit
against the city and county of Alameda.
[reporter] Adante Pointer,
the family's attorney,
is now suing Oakland and Alameda County,
saying police and probation officers
did nothing to stop the attacks.
[Adante] Typically,
the type of cases I deal with,
yes, we're suing the police,
but it's when they have an actual hand
in causing the damage or the harm.
In this situation,
it was a little bit more tenuous,
where we have officers
who were doing their job
but not doing it well.
And because they did it so poorly,
it actually… they poured
gasoline on a fire
to turn it from a fire
to a raging inferno.
[man] Go over there!
How many times I gotta tell you
to separate? Grown-ass men!
[Jamal] Guess what, guys,
I'll be right back.
Next time, I'm gonna kill him next time.
[Adante] After fighting and litigating
in and outside
of a courtroom for a couple of years
to get the family justice,
we were able to obtain a settlement
on behalf of the family.
The city of Oakland paid $450,000
and Alameda County paid $1.95 million.
Combined, $2.4 million to be paid
to the Armstead family.
[Melina] Miles was so full of life
that I don't want his life
to be remembered
without having some piece of feeling
of, like, a win at the end.
And hopefully, when people who promise
to commit their lives
and serve their communities
put on a badge
and go to work in the morning,
they're gonna do their part
to protect every single family,
regardless of how petty
they might think a 911 call is or is not.
[soft music playing]
[Bonnie] Miles' death
will always impact us.
It changed all of our lives.
"My Miles,
it gets lonely at times
knowing you're not a phone call away."
At some point, Miles and I realized
that we always spoke on Tuesdays.
And that gave me the idea,
"I think I'll start writing
to Miles every Tuesday."
And I've been doing that
for five years now,
every single Tuesday.
"Strangely enough, even when
I'm wondering how to fill the hours,
I don't experience depression."
"Sometimes it's the sensation
of a missing, a void, a wandering,
and that something must be you."
[sighs]
"My son, my one and only, my blood,
I long for you, and I always will."
"Love you, my precious son, Mom."
I want all of his kids to know
how much he loved them,
how much he supported them,
how much he believed in them
and their potential,
and how proud he was of his kids.
[Melina] I constantly think
of our life plan,
and I wouldn't have known that
I was going to lose Miles in May
and then welcome Ava in July.
Ava's not just a gift for me,
but she's also the gift for Isabella
because Isabella also lost
three siblings that she had
and had intertwined
her life with for seven years.
So she's kind of like the silly, goofy joy
-that we didn't know we needed.
-[Ava] Mommy?
Yes, ma'am?
[Ava] What are you still talking about?
We're still talking.
We're almost done
for a little bit, though.
-[Ava] Can I give you a hug?
-Sure, you can come give me a hug.
Hi.
Hi. Hi, Mama.
Okay.
Mmm.
-Mommy.
-Done?
No, still want.
You still want? Okay.
Done?
What's over there?
[chuckles] Go upstairs, silly goose.
-[Ava] Bye, Mamacita!
-Bye. [laughs]
There's definitely so much
of Miles in Ava.
This is actually one of
Mommy's favorite pictures.
Mama and Daddy Miles.
Daddy Miles, that's right.
It's bittersweet
and it's painful that he's not here,
but then I also feel like
he's still here a thousand percent.
[upbeat music playing]