Man’s Weekend Rampage Stuns Neighbors

The man known as “Neemy” appeared to neighbors to be a decent fellow--quiet, always quick to help them out with something from his toolbox.

And so they had trouble Tuesday reconciling the fact that Onesimus P. James allegedly erupted into such a fit of jealous anger that he repeatedly assaulted and raped his girlfriend during the weekend and then shot her two young girls in the head after she escaped.

The girls--a 2-year-old whom James had fathered and a 6-year-old from the woman’s prior relationship--remained in very critical condition Tuesday at Riverside County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley, hospital officials said.

James, 36, is dead, having also shot himself in the head, authorities said.

The tragedy was triggered, police and neighbors said, when James’ girlfriend on Friday said she wanted to end their relationship. He responded by binding her with heavy tape and assaulting her repeatedly from Friday night to Monday afternoon.

Throughout the weekend, neighbors were oblivious to what authorities say was unfolding on their block.

“I talked to him on Saturday and he was all right,” said William Roebuck. “He was fixing a neighbor’s lawn mower.”

While James was nonchalantly talking to fellow residents in this rural neighborhood known as Good Hope, east of Lake Elsinore, authorities say his girlfriend was being held captive inside their small home, at times bound by duct tape at her wrists and ankles.

Neighbor Chris Brown would later realize he had never seen the woman during the weekend; normally she would have come over to his house to relax, smoke a cigarette and chat with him and his mother, Lorraine.

The next time Lorraine Brown saw James’ girlfriend was late Monday afternoon, when she showed up breathless, bloody and hysterical, claiming she had been assaulted by James since Friday night.

She had promised James that if he’d release her for a little while, she’d come back, she told sheriff’s investigators.

“She was crying and was all beaten up,” Chris Brown said. “She had black eyes, bruises on her face, and she was in hysterics, worried about her girls.”

Sheriff’s deputies tried to calm the woman down, then went to her home. They approached a trailer where they thought they’d find James, walking past junk cars and the girls’ swing set. The trailer was empty.

Then they checked the tiny house next to it, inched their way inside, and found the girls and James. The girls had each been shot once in the head. James was found dead at the scene.

The girls on Tuesday were “fighting for their lives,” said Sgt. Perri Feinstein Portales, spokeswoman for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. “They’ll need a miracle.”

Chris Brown, as did other neighbors, described James as an unassuming, quiet man, “real laid back.” But Brown said there were hints of a troubled relationship.

In the past, he had seen bruises on the woman, he said. “She told me she was wanting to see someone else--that she was tired of him--and that he had taken pictures of her talking to another guy. I can’t see him doing that, but that’s what she said. And they had their arguments.”

The two girls did not seem affected by whatever turmoil the two adults were experiencing, said Brown. “The kids were always good, always respectful.”