The Sins of the Fathers
History repeats, even in crime.
By all accounts, Calvin Sharp was a nice guy. He was nice enough that he’d gotten approval to drive a taxi in Thousand Oaks, California. You have to pass a drug test for that. He was nice enough that he’d gotten an L.A. restaurant to pay for an ad on the side of the van he used as his cab. He was nice enough to have carried hundreds, maybe thousands, of people around Southern California in that cab with no serious complaints from customers. Plus, he was good-looking. It’s hard to distrust a guy like that.
Then, in mid-August of 2007, Calvin, age 27, went completely off the rails and attacked three people with a meat cleaver. One of them, six year-old Sev’n Molina, was killed. The boy’S mother, Sharp’s ex-girlfriend was critically injured trying to stop him, with one of her hands almost cut off. Another woman who tried to intervene was also badly hurt. Oh, and he’d also used the cleaver to kill his dog.
Today’s judges make glaciers seem like speed demons. It was November of 2009 before Sharp appeared before a judge to change his plea in the murder from “not guilty” to “not guilty by reason of insanity.” It didn’t work. Many people in the apartment complex where Sev’n died had seen Sharp acting completely normal. He was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Attacks like Sharp’s are rare. Most murders are committed with guns. One study shows pistols were used in more than 7,000 murders in 2023 in this country.
But wait! That’s not all. 5,295 murders were from “firearms, type not stated.” Then come “other guns” at 598, rifles at 511 homicides, and shotguns for 156 killings. Knives as a murder weapon are next (1,562), then blunt instruments like hammers and baseball bats (317). America isn’t a place for Agatha Christie—only 10 people were listed as strangled and just 20 were poisoned.
Something odd like a meat cleaver gets put in the “knives or cutting instruments” category, but I’d bet only a few murders are committed with something like a cleaver or an ax.
Oh, speaking of axes…Fast-forward to two weeks ago. A 15 year-old boy named Zayde Keohohu who suffered from cerebral palsy was killed by an ax wielded by his brother. Zayde had spent his life in a wheelchair and was no threat to anyone. Years ago Zayde’s doctors said he probably wouldn’t live past age three. His mother Jante said her younger son “exuded love and aloha.” (She is Hawaiian.)
Zayde’s older brother Zuberi is 24, and on December 5 he just flipped out in what his uncle called a “manic episode.” After the murder of his brother, Zuberi ran to a local high school in Thousand Oaks. Police brought him down as he ran on the school’s football field naked, holding the bloody ax. As a local TV station reported, “A neighbor told KTLA that Zuberi allegedly suffers from mental health issues and ‘had lost touch with reality.” He sure had. A few hours before the murder he’d gotten stuck in a storm drain near his home and firefighters had to rescue him. They sent him home just in time to kill his handicapped brother.
The two were actually half-brothers. You see, Zuberi’s last name wasn’t Keohohu. His name is Zuberi Sharp. He’s Calvin Sharp’s son.
But you saw that coming, didn't you?