Two brothers accused of stabbing a father to death in front of his four-year-old son at a Target store in the San Francisco Bay Area on Christmas Eve have been charged with murder. Tyrone Griffin Jr., 36, of Hayward, California was attacked after a confrontation with two men inside his local Target store.
The brothers, from Hayward, 22-year-old Frankie Archuleta and 25-year-old Jesse Archuleta, have been charged and are being held without bail.
Police say 36-year-old Tyrone Griffin was in the toy aisle when he asked the two men to turn down loud music that had inappropriate language for children. An altercation broke out.
Police say in court documents that Griffin grabbed a wine bottle from a shelf and hit Frankie Archuleta with it and that Jesse Archuleta said he stabbed Griffin four times to defend his brother.
The father-of-four was rushed to hospital with four stab wounds at around 8pm on December 24 but was pronounced dead.
Griffin had been out shopping with his four-year-old son for last minute gifts on the day he was killed.
When the Archuleta brothers entered the courtroom, the victim’s wife, Nicole Simmons, yelled out ‘Coward!’ according to SFGate. ‘I hope you burn in hell!’
She was escorted out of the courtroom.
‘I could feel my heart beating real fast, and I could feel my blood boiling,’ she told the outlet. ‘I lost control of all my feelings. I went completely blank and this anger took over.’
Griffin’s wife Nicole Simmons wrote on a GoFundMe page that her husband had gone to the store to buy more presents for his children ‘whom he loved dearly’
Griffin’s wife Nicole Simmons wrote on a GoFundMe page that her husband had gone to the store to buy more presents for his children ‘whom he loved dearly’
Witnesses said the devoted dad had asked that the music be turned down because it contained language that degraded women.
‘Not only did he dislike the fact that they were cussing in front of his children, but he disliked the fact that they were doing it on Christmas Eve in front of the kids,’ Griffin’s mother, Yolanda Sherraine Lindsey, said that store employees told her.
Simmons said she had no idea how the brothers had a wine bottle in the toy section.
Griffin’s wife Nicole Simmons wrote on a GoFundMe page that her husband had gone to the store to buy more presents for his children ‘whom he loved dearly.’
She said on the page that he was determined to make the holiday ‘the greatest Christmas ever.’
‘Who would have ever thought these last-minute gifts would cost him his life?’ she said.
She said that Griffin loved the holidays and would always go all out, with a big tree, a lit up house and plenty of gifts for their kids.
‘Christmas will never be the same for us,’ said Simmons, who was high school sweethearts with her husband, to Mercury News.
The widow said she had only just been able to bring herself to tell her children, aged between four and 12, what happened although they are too young to grasp what it really means.
By Kiri Blakeley For Dailymail.com and Associated Press
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