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Family and friends are mourning the loss of a Livermore teenager who died earlier this month in a wreck while visiting the coast for Monterey Car Week – an apparent drunk-driving crash that sees his friend now facing felony manslaughter and other serious charges.
Granada High School alumnus Jerrod Chapman-Marshall, who would have celebrated his 20th birthday this Wednesday, was remembered as a caring son and boyfriend who was settling into a new job in the distribution industry and preparing to take the next steps in adulthood.
“He was such a good kid. I just want everybody to know this,” his mother Bonnie Marshall told Livermore Vine on Tuesday. “He was extremely funny … He was just so nice and just cared about everybody.”
“He had it all planned out. Like, we were just talking about it. I helped him pick out his health insurance,” Marshall said. “He wanted to have kids with her, and his whole goal was to make it so she didn’t have to work, and she could just stay home and raise the kids, because I’m a single mom and he watched me work, go to school full-time for years and work two, three jobs at a time, and miss out on so much.”
“The only thing that makes me feel any comfort is I know that the kids were just having a really great day and my son … he was just happy and, like, just in a really good place in his life,” she added.
Mother and son moved to Livermore in 2016, and Chapman-Marshall attended Marylin Avenue and Junction Avenue schools before going onto Granada, where he played football for the Matadors and graduated as part of the class of 2024.
A Pedrozzi Scholar who went on to study at Las Positas College in his hometown, Chapman-Marshall worked during his school years, including at McDonald’s on the corner North P Street and Olivina Avenue and at Granada Bowl, according to his mom.
“As soon as he could start working, he started to work because he wanted to buy a car. He loves cars,” Marshall said. “He was such a great kid. I’m saying, like, he even started paying more money in bills because he just didn’t want me to work two jobs anymore.”
He got hired as a junior estimator at PACE Supply several months ago and saw the role with the plumbing supply distributor as a potential career path. “The job that would get him out of his mom’s house, and help him take care of his girlfriend and his mom,” said Marshall, who teaches math at Las Positas College and California State University, East Bay.
“He was kind of a homebody. He had a lot of friends, but he was always kind of like the old soul of the group – because I was 18 when I had him, so he kind of grew up fast a little bit,” Marshall remembered.
“Video games were like his No. 1 thing that he loved. And he liked cars, and I’m learning now after he’s gone, how much he loved making music,” his mom said. “I guess he’s got like a whole SoundCloud and was in the middle of making an album … I had no idea.”
His girlfriend Lorrie Jacobsen added, “He was just a great, kind-hearted man – a very hard-working man, especially for his future or our future. And … he was the type of friend that would literally go beyond to make sure his friends were OK. He’s very adamant about driving, always taking his friends’ keys, making sure they don’t leave drunk.”
Family and friends still have questions about what exactly transpired on that fateful afternoon Aug. 16 – although Marshall acknowledges she isn’t really ready to hear all of the answers.
“All I know is that the kids were out at Car Week, and they were just kind of out having fun and a little too much fun,” Marshall said. “I know that they had been drinking a little bit and the driver, I guess, was a little bit more impaired than the rest of them. And just, from what I know, they hit this turn really fast and it just happened really fast and went into a tree.”
She added, “If I’m being honest, I’ve been very hesitant in how deeply I’ve been involved in the information. I just, like, can visualize his face and like the more I know, the more I can see and it’s just … Like, I did everything in my life for my son. Like, everything was for him. I went to college for him. I built this whole life out here. I just can’t deal with this.”
Chapman-Marshall was among four occupants in the 2009 silver BMW coupe convertible that crashed in the area of Barnet Segal Lane and Iris Canyon Road just after 5 p.m. Aug. 16, apparently traveling from Carmel-by-the-Sea to Monterey, according to authorities.
The driver – 20-year-old Dublin resident Sebastian Feliciano, who had been at Marshall’s house the day before helping fix her car – is accused of driving recklessly with a blood-alcohol content over 0.13%. It is illegal to drive with a BAC over 0.01% under 21 years old in California.
The three passengers and the driver were transported with injuries to Natividad Medical Center, where Chapman-Marshall was pronounced dead at 19 years old. The other three young adults were treated and later released, according to Monterey police Lt. Ethan Andrews.
The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office charged Feliciano on Friday with gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, two felony counts of DUI with injury, misdemeanor driving on a suspended license and special allegations of causing great bodily injury and death during the crash.
It was not immediately clear whether Feliciano is represented by an attorney yet nor when his first court appearance is scheduled for.
Back at home, Marshall and a small group of family and friends were getting ready to go forward with her son’s birthday party as scheduled at Granada Bowl on Wednesday, a celebration of his life and legacy. A memorial and time for mourning, she said, will follow down the line.
“He was just so positive,” she said. “Any time I was sad, he would just make me tea … He was just that kid, like, the friend’s parents would always say, ‘Why can’t you be more like Jerrod?'”
Those friends have turned out for Chapman-Marshall’s mom in her time of need.
“I’ve had the whole D-line, the whole football team in my house, bringing me flowers and just doing things for us. Been really sweet. I didn’t even know he had that many friends,” Marshall said, adding that they’ve been remembering her son with one of their favorite shared mottos – “forever in that mode”.
A GoFundMe campaign, “Support Bonnie After Jerrod’s Loss”, has raised more than $20,000 to date to support Marshall in the wake of her son’s death.
“I started the GoFundMe because no parent should ever have to outlive their child, and in the middle of an unimaginable loss, the last thing she should have to worry about is paying bills or how quickly she needs to return to work,” friend Kate Pruette told Livermore Vine.
“There is no timeline for grieving something like this,” Pruette added. “I wanted to help give her the option to take the time she needs to focus on healing, being with her family, and finding whatever sense of normalcy is possible after such a devastating loss. We can’t take away her pain, but we can help make sure financial stress isn’t something she has to carry on top of everything else.”
