The former Cedarville Rancheria Chairwoman convicted in a 2014 mass shooting in Alturas will be sentenced to death, a jury decided Thursday.
Cherie Rhoades killed four people and injured two others on Feb. 20, 2014 inside the Cedarville Rancheria Tribal Office. At the time, Rhoades was about to be ousted as the tribal chairwoman and EVICTED.
Those killed were her nephew Glenn Colonico, her niece Angel Penn, her brother Rurik Davis and tribal administrator Sheila Russo.
Russo's husband, said that she had uncovered misused funds in the tribal books, which, in part, led to Rhoades being evicted. The shooting began during the eviction hearing.
Rhoades was ultimately convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder, for shooting and stabbing two of her other nieces.
Now, nearly three years later, survivors are haunted by what happened that night."I still have a bullet in my back side, and it's always gonna be there," Melissa Davis, Rhoades' niece, said.
Melissa and another of Rhoades' nieces, Monica, spoke with FOX40 Thursday evening after the jury's decision was announced.
"For me, one of the most devastating parts was laying under that table and listening to my sister screaming and there was nothing I could do," Monica Davis said.
Both say Rhoades never explained her rampage in court, but her actions during the trial spoke louder than her words ever could.
"You'd see her laughing, joking," Melissa Davis said. "She didn't care what she did."
This is what disenrollments do to people.
ReplyDeleteThis woman just got fed up with the bullshit and took it upon herself to make the evil doers pay.
\It's to bad that it came to this point for people to listen to the ones being hurt by corruption of so called Tribal Leaders.
And still even after all of this that happened in this case, the
U.S.Government is still turning a blind eye to the corruption of Tribal Leaders.