2 weeks Ago
Mother Pamela and step-Father Gerald Coco remember their late son Dexter Cormier with a photo and his dog, Kash, in the mother-in-law-suite where Cormier would frequently stay at while caretaking for his father on November 6, 2024. Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save In the early morning of Sunday, Oct. 20, shots cut through a crowd waiting to order at a food tent on Greenwell Springs Road, as Southern University's homecoming weekend was coming to a close.
It was nearly 4 a.m., and most of the day's festivities had subsided.
The crowd didn't know the shooter, 24-year-old Michael Robinson, nor did Robinson have a specific target when he opened fire. According to an affidavit for his arrest, he claims he heard gunshots and responded in kind. There was no other shooter, and the victims were bystanders.
Of the six people rushed to the hospital in the aftermath only Dallas resident Dexter Cormier Jr. died that night. The 35-year-old Cormier was born and reared in Baton Rouge.
So, it was a true homecoming when he drove down east Texas highways to see his friends and family, specifically his mother, Pamela Coco. Earlier on that Saturday, he had asked Coco for a Southern jersey he could wear to the game. Before he left, his grandfather saw Cormier through the window, walking his dog, Kash.
It was the last time they would see Cormier alive. Family members are still struggling with the hole Cormier's death has left in their lives. The friends, brothers and cousins who can no longer catch up with him over a game of basketball.
The fiancée, still in Dallas, forced to re-imagine her life without him. And the father, paralyzed after a stroke, who was the reason Cormier had left his small business to serve as a caregiver. Friends and family In conversations with the people in his life, two facts about Cormier come up: He was never seen without a smile, and he was insanely talented at basketball.
"He had a ball in his hand as soon as he could walk," his mother said. "It was a thing that he gravitated to; he loved it." Family gatherings always involved basketball, at least for the men, and Cormier picked up the game from his father and uncle, both of whom played at the college level.
By the time he was 7 years old, Cormier was part of an Amateur Athletic Union team in a travel basketball league. Not only that, he was already playing two years above his age. As he grew up, Cormier became a respected point guard among the older boys, and formed friendships that lasted through his life.
"The other young men were like my sons, too," Coco said. "We always had an open door. I would always have 12, 13 players in my house at any given time.
They would come on a weekend and they'd leave together for school on a Monday." Many of these boys, who had accompanied the Cormiers on long drives to championships in other states, attended a balloon release for Cormier on Oct. 24.
While they reminisced, the same words were echoed: He was a committed friend, he was hilarious, and he was certainly always smiling. Friends and family of Dexter Cormier Jr. watch as blue and black balloons float into the distant sky.
A balloon release was held in Cormier's memory on Oct. 24, 2024 at JS Clark Memorial Park. The fiancée Cormier's athletic talents eventually led him to play basketball for Texas College, a historically black institution in Tyler, Texas.
It was there, specifically in the math and science building, that he met Octavia Jackson, the woman he would later plan to marry. Their first meeting came on a morning that Jackson would have otherwise wished to forget. She was working three jobs at the time, having to race to her morning classes immediately after her shift ended.
But that day, she was late. "It was raining, and I had to change my shoes in the car. So I looked crazy that day," Jackson laughed.
"I had on sweatpants; I had on cowboy boots, because they were the only closed-toed shoes I had." In an attempt to make up time, she was running through the rain, only to find the door locked when she finally reached it. Once inside, "the halls were clear, and I was stomping down the stairs," she said.
"I saw this boy at the bottom of the stairs, and he was just looking at me, smiling." That day, Cormier's signature smile wasn't enough. "I thought he was going to say something smart about the way I looked, right? So, I had an attitude," she said.
Instead, Cormier surprised her, just saying "I like you," and laughing to himself. "I had butterflies," Jackson said. But it would take seeing him again at one of his basketball games, and encouragement from a friend, for Jackson to finally put her number in his phone.
Cormier was studying business, and had already begun to run his own small business by the time he met Jackson. The Lab, named for the cartoon "Dexter's Laboratory," was an online marketplace where Cormier listed vintage and upscale shoes and menswear. "My son is a person who loves style," Coco said.
"He takes so many pictures because whatever he's wearing is the merchandise he would sell." Cormier's own taste guided the site. He would see an item he liked, wear it, then find where he could buy large orders of it cheaper to list on The Lab.
"He's gonna choose the one thing that he likes about your outfit. He's gonna consistently compliment you on it, and that made him a great salesman," Jackson said. More than once, this energy led Cormier to literally sell someone the shirt off his back.
"We would go out on a date, and he would have on the most rare throwback jerseys on," Jackson said, "and other men would stop him and be like, 'where'd you get that from?'" By the end of the conversation Cormier would have recouped his date expense, and be ready to happily spend dinner in a white undershirt. Jackson never minded. From top row, left to right; Thea Jackson, Khylan Cormier, Andre Jackson, Jared Jackson, Eli Jackson, bottom row; Kash, Gerald Coco and Pamela Coco pose for a picture in the mother-in-law suite where the late Dexter Cormier would frequently stay on November 6, 2024.
The father In the summer of 2018, Cormier made a decision that would force him to step away from The Lab and the basketball camps where he was a mentor. While on a flight to Las Vegas, Cormier's father, Dexter Cormier Sr., or "Big Dexter," suffered a massive stroke.
The following days were hectic: Cormier had to travel to be at his father's side. The prognosis was grim. Cormier Sr.
had lost function to his entire left side. He couldn't sit up, stand, walk or even swallow on his own. Doctors recommended taking Big Dexter off life support.
Some family members agreed with them. But Cormier Jr. resisted.
"He made a decision for him, that he was going to do everything he could do for his father," Coco said. "He wasn't going to pull the plug." Cormier Sr.
was in the hospital for months for surgeries, then in assisted care, before finally being set up to live in an apartment with his son. Mother Pamela and step-Father Gerald Coco hold back tears during an interview remembering their late son Dexter Cormier in their home on November 6, 2024. The pair spent two years in Las Vegas before being able to move back to Texas, closer to Jackson.
Cormier Jr. only returned to Dallas once during those two years, when he flew in for Jackson's birthday. "You couldn't convince him to do anything else, no matter how hard it got," Jackson said.
"He wasn't going to let Big Dexter go into any other type of care." When Cormier Sr. eventually got enough mobility to begin physical therapy, Cormier Jr.
mirrored the therapist and learned the exercises to help his father with them. In the beginning, when Cormier Sr. still had both breathing and feeding tubes, Cormier Jr.
would "put water in his mouth, just to see if he could swallow," Coco said. "As his dad got stronger, he wanted the 'trach' out of there. If he had to feed him slow then he would feed him slow, and they took it out eventually.
" For Jackson, it was hard to see the man she loved put himself through that. They were still in their 20s, they weren't stable, they didn't have the kind of money to make that commitment full time. The father and son had a new kind of life together.
Cormier Jr. helped his father through his medicines and his exercises, and their place in Fort Worth was equipped with a hospital bed, leg pumps and medical wedges. Cormier Jr.
would bathe and dress his father, sit him up and help him into his chair. "Nothing was going to deter him from doing it, no matter how hard it got," Jackson said, "He never wants anyone to feel like they're alone, and so he definitely wasn't gonna let his dad feel like that." They would watch movies often, nature documentaries being Cormier Sr.
's favorite. Cormier Jr. would help his father shoot a small plastic basketball at a hoop over their door.
"That's probably where he got his trash talking skills from," Jackson said of her fiancé's relationship with his father, smiling. "The trash talk definitely got bad." When Cormier Jr.
would visit Baton Rouge, he would bring his father, set up in a wheelchair in the car. The two would stay at a mother-in-law suite in the back of Coco's house. The future Pallbearers for Dexter Cormier Jr.
stand by his casket during Cormier's funeral on Nov. 2, 2024. Courtesy of Pamela Coco.
Cormier Jr.'s funeral was held Nov. 2 at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church.
The place was filled with hundreds of people ready to honor Cormier Jr.'s memory: his teammates from AAU basketball, friends from high school, and family from as far as New York and Cancun, including Coco, Jackson and Cormier Sr. There was also a contingent of 45 of Cormier's former classmates and faculty from Texas College, led by Dr.
Willie Woods, former director of operations for Texas College men's basketball. Woods came with surprises: a massive poster of Cormier Jr. from his time on the team and one of his game jerseys.
Both now hang at the Coco residence. Mother Pamela and step-father Gerald Coco look at newly-hung photo of their late son Dexter Cormier in their home on November 6, 2024. "Dexter was a person who loved all people," Woods said, describing how well-known Cormier Jr.
was on campus, how he was both a star athlete and student, "and Dexter always smiled." Then came another surprise, one that not even Cormier Jr.'s closest family had been aware of.
"Dexter had been very vocal about wanting to get a scholarship together," Woods said. He had come to speak with Woods about the idea in just the month before his death. He didn't have the funds to invest in it then, but he envisioned a scholarship for black athletes coming to Texas College.
Cormier Jr. had stressed to Woods that he wanted the scholarship set up as soon as possible. After Cormier Jr.
died, Woods alongside other alumni, raised $5,000 to start the Dexter Cormier Smile Scholarship, which will be awarded for the first time in the fall semester of 2025. Woods said he hopes it will show people "a different side of Dexter, that was more caring, more giving, and more humble than the dressed-to-impress guy" they might have known. In the funeral's November air, Eli Jackson, Cormier Jr.
's other grandfather, said "the ones that really care, really are there for their family, these are the ones that we're losing. We lost a good one, we lost a good one." In the aftermath, Cormier Sr.
has been relocated to Jennings, where one of his sisters is now caring for him. Back in Baton Rouge, Coco's thoughts of the fatal shooting lead to questions. "I know they say they found the person who committed the act, but it doesn't bring my son back," Coco said.
"It doesn't bring my son back." "I would tell that young man, 'before you act, think. Think about the consequences.
Your family loses you to prison,'" she said. "'Think of all of the devastated family members, me included. What do you do after you sit back and the dust has settled? How do you feel about what you've done?'".
