DCS denies involvement; community wants to help runaway teen, now incarcerated for attempted murder
- Jamie Duffy
- Jan 25
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 25
FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---Conjecture and gossip lead the discussion on why young teens, Essix Robinson and his brother, Zy Rel, were in a vacant home on Bowser Avenue on Aug. 23 of last year.
The ‘bando,’ as abandoned homes are called, and identified by the boys’ grandmother as 4423 Bowser Ave.,was the scene of a shooting between Essix, then 14, and Jorge Mendez-Cornejo. The shooting left Mendez-Cornejo wounded, according to a news release from the Fort Wayne Police Department.
Essix, now 15, was charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery and residential entry and was waived into adult court Jan. 5.
Tuesday he appeared in Allen Superior Court, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, a chain at his waist. He sat alone in the dock while Magistrate Samuel Keirns set the next hearing for June 2. His case is now assigned to Superior Court Judge Frances Gull.
(Before and after photos of 4423 Bowser Avenue. Left is the photo on the county website; right is the home renovated and for sale by Keller Williams Realty)
As a minor, Essix is incarcerated at the Allen County Juvenile Center in Fort Wayne while his attorneys, Megan Close and Andrew Scheer, and his grandmother, who will not be named at this time, try to work out a good solution in the criminal justice system.
Meanwhile, the community, moved by his story of struggle and survival, wants to help and is reaching out to donate money or help of some other kind.
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Comments on social media from former teachers, coaches and friends paint a portrait of a kid who was never seen as a rotten apple. Many who knew him were shocked that he was in this situation.
“When I looked at that, it broke me down,” Demitrius Jackson, in school suspension teacher at Blackhawk Middle School, said this week.
Essix was not a kid who talked back, he said.
“Every kid has their moments when you have to redirect them. I could tell his home life was different from other students in the building.”
Jackson knew Essix and his younger brother when Essix was in the sixth and seventh grade. Zy Rel, was a year behind.
After the seventh grade, when Essix would have been around 13 or 14, the family moved to the Prince Chapman Academy area and a different school district, East Allen.
It was then that the two boys ran away several times, according to multiple sources, telling the police they would rather be in foster care than at home.
Jackson firmly believes the state’s Department of Child Services should be held accountable, an agency that several people have told The Probable Cause they contacted about the family situation, “marks” discovered on both Essix and Tyrel and domestic abuse.
“If DCS had done their job from the jump, we wouldn’t be reading this article,” Jackson said. “If they cry out multiple times that they’d rather be in foster care because someone is whooping on you every day that wasn’t your daddy, you would get frustrated and probably run away too. That’s anybody.”
Friday, the DCS replied to a request for comment.
“Since this is a court proceeding in which DCS is not involved, it would not be appropriate for DCS to comment on this case,” Ron Green, DCS spokesperson, wrote. “Sorry.”
Roderick Parker, an advocate for youth at risk who founded Big Hearts Community Projects in Fort Wayne, said his biggest concern is “that this child is locked up and they throw away the key.”
There might be an element of self defense in the case, but no one can obtain the probable cause on a juvenile case, even when the child is waived into adult court.
Parker is waiting to talk to Robinson’s attorneys before he publishes a petition to dismiss or drastically reduce the charges which could send Robinson away for up to 60 years or “the rest of his life.”
“I want to find about why this man, who was not the homeowner, was in this house waiting on these kids with a gun,” Parker said.
The “bando” on Bowser Avenue isn’t far from their grandmother’s home where they are said to have run away several times last year. She has said she always left the door open for the brothers, but if the police came they were always taken back to the home where their mother lives with a man folks allege is responsible for using the belt on them.
Those who’ve spoken to Zy Rel, the only other person at the home when the shootout occurred, has told them that they came in through the back door. Mendez-Cornejo ran toward them and started shooting, he said.
Essix had his mother’s gun which he took from the home. Hence, the reason people think he shot in self defense.
The home, now freshly painted, changed hands in December 2024 for the sale price of $13, 369, according to county records. The new owner, American Investment Funding LLC in Roanoke, would have been the owner when the boys discovered it.
Judging from the photo that appears on the county website, the home underwent a renovation and is now on the market for about $126,000.
The boys, 14 and 13 at the time, had run away from a fraught and allegedly abusive domestic situation where a man who is not their father took discipline into his own hands - when he was there, according to a school official and neighbor who often took in Essix and his siblings.
The children attended Adams Elementary when they lived on McCormick Avenue and Essix, the oldest of the five, moved on to Blackhawk Elementary until the family moved.
The neighbor, who is white, witnessed first hand what went on at the home on McCormick Avenue, claiming that the boys’ mother used food stamps to pay for services. She also allegedly used them to buy snacks she had the boys sell from a stand.
“These kids were living in a f—-ing house where raccoons were popping out of the walls,” said the neighbor who often took the boys to football practices and told the coaches what was going on.
The boys’ real father lives in New York, she said, and is aware of the alleged mistreatment of them.
She never knew of any bad behavior while they were on McCormick Avenue and posited that because the boys were black, folks got the wrong idea.
“When you see four black kids running through the yards, you assume they’re doing something, but they were just running to the park and back,” the neighbor said.
If there are reports that he’s “acting up” at ACJC, it’s to be expected, she said.
“He’s angry he’s in there.”
The neighbor went to the Tuesday hearing and sat with tears in her eyes when she saw Essix sitting alone in the dock. His maternal grandmother and her sister were also there.
The grandmother who paid to retain attorneys for Essix has said she made calls to DCS prior to Essix’s arrest. During a group meeting with female relatives after the hearing, she was loathe to condemn her daughter, but admitted they were estranged.
The main goal is to keep him from spending the rest of his life in prison where little, if any, rehabilitation will take place, sources insist.
Zy Rel, on probation and in home detention, is back at the very home where the abuse allegedly occurred. He was apparently charged with being a runaway, those close to him said, and is on an ankle monitor.
“When this “s—t” came out, all the teachers at Adams were messaging me,” the neighbor said. “They were heartbroken. Everyone was saying how great they were.”
Jackson said he called Essix “my son. I know for a fact that he had a good heart and he still do.”
Thank you for the way that you have painted this young man. Not as a criminal but as a child and a human being. Thank you for using a photo of him that does not show him in a jumpsuit. Thank you.