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When Jirou Zachere stalked the mother of his child to the Jefferson Apartments in Beaumont, he visited what he thought was the home his exgirlfriend shared with their young child and a new beau in July 2020. According to testimony given by Zachere during a 2024 trial for the murder that subsequently ensued when he locked in on his ex, the jilted lover wandered the apartment complex property until he zeroed in on a bedroom window emitting sounds of “intimate” activity. Without hesitation, Zachere unloaded a gun through the bedroom window, striking two and killing one.
Later, Zachere learned the bedroom was not that of his ex-girlfriend, but instead the apartment of Marine veteran, 24-year-old Clifford Earl Jones Jr., whose apartment just so happened to be the address directly above Zachere’s former girlfriend.
“I wasn’t thinking,” Zachere said of why he murdered a man he didn’t know. Zachere’s hail of gunfire also struck a woman who was in the bedroom with Jones at the time of his death. “I didn’t intentionally shoot, I just shot through the window.
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
Zachere took the witness stand before a jury in Jefferson County 252nd District Court Judge Raquel West’s courtroom the week of Jan. 11 to argue that the homicide was an accident.
“I was just trying to take out frustration,” Zachere said, urging the 12-person jury to believe that his intent was not to harm anyone, not even his ex or her new lover. Despite evidence presented that revealed Zachere admitted he thought it was his child’s home he was shooting at, Zachere said during the trial that he was not intending to harm anyone and it was “a coincidence” that he shot Jones.
For months, Zachere kept quiet about causing Jones’ death. There was no link between the two men, and Jones’ death was a mystery to all who knew and loved the mild-mannered man that aspired to be a football coach someday. While Toneenya Green laid her son to rest with no peace as to the identity of her son’s killer, Zachere continued on with his life – and with stalking his exgirlfriend and her new boyfriend.
Five months after killing Jones, Zachere returned to the same apartment complex, with the same gun, and again unloaded his weapon on property tenants. On the witness stand, Zachere’s admitted facts of the subsequent shooting reveal he went to the front door this time. When he kicked down the door, Zachere said, his toddler child was sitting in the front room, as was his ex’s new boyfriend. Both men started shooting.
“I was just seeing if I could, you know, talk to (the new boyfriend),” Zachere said. According to Zachere, although he did shoot the new boyfriend “several times” that day, it was in selfdefense.
Prosecutor Luke Nichols returned the jury’s attention to the case under deliberation – which didn’t even include the shooting of the new boyfriend, or of the woman shot alongside murder victim Jones, or the pending stalking charges alleging terrorizing the mother of his child. While investigating the shooting at Zachere’s ex-girlfriend’s home, Beaumont police ran ballistics on the bullets. When the evidence was returned, a match was found to the murder investigation of the ex-girlfriend’s neighbor.
“Having the wrong apartment does not absolve him of murder,” Nichols argued to the jury. “He murdered Clifford Jones for no good reason at all.”
It took less than one hour for the jury to return with a verdict: Guilty. After the verdict, the court heard from the victim’s family.
Jones, the father of a now 6-year-old, missing the ability to see his son grow, hurts Jones’ mother the most.
“If you could have a perfect child, he was that child,” Green said of her deceased son, addressing his killer uttered through wails of grief, “Of all the people in the world, you took my … you took my baby.”
“It was horrible – bullet holes everywhere,” Green relived of the scene presented to her the night of her son’s death, and in her frequent dreams most nights since then. “I can only imagine what Clifford’s last moments were when those bullets came into that bedroom.
“Like most young people, he thought he had time to fulfill his dreams. My heart will forever be broken. Instead, all I have is memories of the past and thoughts of what his final moments must have been like.”
Jones’ family, suffering their own devastation, reached out to the family of their loved one’s killer to offer comfort in what is also a time of despair for them as well.
“We lost, but your family lost, too,” Jones’ sister, Taneace Fisher, voiced, adding that, “The pain still hurts.
“I call it ‘my new norm.’ It’s something we have to adjust to.”
Given the option of to ascribe penalty at anywhere from 5 – 99 years, or life, in prison, jurors were asked by Fisher to “Use the Lord as your guide” when deciding.
“There is a reason why we (the family) are not making that decision,” Fisher concluded. “As long as the Lord’s hand is in it, it will all be good.”
Zachere’s grandmother, Joan Roberts, accepted the grace of Jones’ family, remarking: “To the family: My heart goes out to you. I’m so sorry.”
After deliberation, the jury sentenced Zachere to 70 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to commence immediately.