This story is a collaboration between the LAist and The LA Local. Agya K. Aning and Alain Stephens are freelance reporters.
Cheyenne Barrett spent the second night of April last year surrounded by loved ones. Among them was her new boyfriend, Zackery Melton. “He was sweet, and he was really funny,” Barrett said. “He had really nice eyes.”
His friends called him Turdle. Turtles are known for their slow, plodding pace. Turdle — with a “D” — had a reputation for quick, athletic strides, which his friends had trouble keeping pace with. He was also known for keeping his word, his loyalty and a seemingly ever-present smile. The Texan had bucked convention his entire life. When he wasn’t couch surfing, he slept in his car. According to his father, Turdle called his lifestyle “living free.”
For years, Barrett and Turdle were just friends. On April 2, 2025, they had officially been a couple for just two days. Barrett had just quit her job at a seafood restaurant on the Venice Boardwalk, so she spent the day celebrating with Turdle and some friends at Westminster Dog Park. A couple of hours after sunset, one of those friends stepped away to talk with her boyfriend, who had come looking for her, in a nearby parking lot. When the couple started arguing, Turdle left to check on his friend. Then a gunshot rang out, and everybody split.
After escaping the park, Barrett canvassed the neighborhood in search of Turdle. Eventually, she heard a woman screaming her name and followed the cries back to the park, where Turdle lay dead from a gunshot wound above his right eye. There, on the parking lot pavement, she held his body and begged him not to go. “That was the last thing I said, that we all love you,” Barrett said.
Although unhoused, Turdle was wealthy in ways that many young men are desperate for. He was part of a vibrant community. His platoon of friends saw him as a leader and a fount of motivation and support. He also had a daughter from a previous relationship, and another ex was pregnant with his son, who was born about seven weeks after his murder.
At the time of his death, Turdle, 28, was the 16th unhoused person to be shot and killed in the city of Los Angeles last year, according to records from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner. Before the year’s end, the department reported 11 more.
While living on the streets presents many dangers, an investigation by LAist and The LA Local found gun violence is a growing threat to the city’s unhoused residents. Since 2015, 278 unhoused people in L.A. have been shot and killed, according to an analysis of records from the Los Angeles Police Department. The number of shooting deaths of unhoused people remains high even as homicides among the city’s general population declined last year.
No single factor fully explains this persistent violence. Our reporting points to a combination of more people living on the streets, illegal gun possession, gang activity and some Angelenos’ deep hatred of unhoused people. Turdle’s death ties to some of these trends. In other ways, it’s an outlier.
Numerous unhoused Angelenos told LAist and The LA Local that trying to get justice for matters big or small often means being ignored or treated like a criminal. In Turdle’s case, his killer, Tyrone Jones, 46, was tracked down by a team of detectives and convicted of murder in May.
Turdle’s friends and family say his life meant a great deal to many, including the Venice Beach community, where he and his dog were well known. His death generated significant public outcry, a level of attention not often seen in cases involving unhoused murder victims in Los Angeles.
'The streets called him'
Turdle was born May 14, 1996, and spent his first year of life in Junction, a tiny town in the middle of Texas. Infants typically start walking anywhere between 9 and 18 months of age, but Karen Webb, Turdle’s mother, said it took him only 7. “He was born, and his feet were already on the ground,” she said.
Webb remarried while her son was still young, and the family moved to Florida and later to Indiana. She and her husband filled their home with music, and her headstrong son taught himself to play the harmonica and guitar. Still a Texan through and through, Turdle loved cowboys. “He would always carry around this Woody doll, and he would always wear cowboy boots and a cowboy hat,” said his younger half-sister, Abby Webb.
Turdle could be excitable and hot-headed, so his mom enrolled him in kickboxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes in an attempt to center him. He thrived. His protective nature — and fierce hatred of bullies — would see him using these skills to defend those he loved on many occasions.
Around the time he became an adult, the family decided to leave Indiana. Turdle preferred to move back to Texas with his biological father, Mark Melton. But it only took a few weeks of being in the Lone Star State before he set his sights on California. “He pretty much told me that if I didn't fly him out there or get him there, he'll walk,” Webb said. “And you know what? I knew he would.” So she bought him a ticket.
Soon after turning 18, Turdle followed in the great American tradition of venturing out West without a connection or real plan, just vague hopes of capitalizing on his talents as a musician and fighter. “Dreams. That's what was there — dreams. Nothing tangible,” Webb said.
Turdle’s first stop was San Francisco, which he took to immediately, his mother said. “It was just adventure for him,” she said, adding her son had no problem sleeping in the streets. Webb said this lifestyle would always be a point of contention between the two of them. “The streets called him. They just did,” she said. “Even when he was young, I would find him sleeping in a park.”
Early on his journey, he made his way to Venice, where he met Nehemiah McGee, then an unhoused teen, while skateboarding. By his own admission, McGee, now 26, was a bit naive when they became friends. But Turdle protected him. “He gave me sound advice when I didn't have nobody,” McGee said. With the addition of one other friend, they made up the original members of a group of unhoused friends that would swell to about two dozen — The Dirty Kids, as they called themselves, also known as The Abbott Kinney Crew. Its members came from all over: McGee grew up in Seattle, while others hailed from places like Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, Louisiana and Tennessee.
The number of people living on the streets of Los Angeles grew alongside The Dirty Kids. From 2015 to 2025, L.A.’s unsheltered homeless population rose from 18,000 to 27,000. While just 1% of Americans live in the city of Los Angeles, it's home to 10% of the country’s unsheltered homeless population.
The Dirty Kids slept wherever they could, including inside of cars, on the beach, and beneath the trees in Westminster Dog Park. Each morning, the first person up would rouse the others with the booming imperative to “Wake up and rage!” It was the group’s way of saying, “Get up and do something,” McGee said. That could mean skateboarding, performing music, looking for jobs or housing, playing Fortnite and “flying signs” — standing on a corner with a written message, hoping that a stranger would lend a buck or two. They also cared for their dogs, which nearly everyone had.
Turdle met his companion, a Siberian husky named Max, on Venice Beach. His owner at the time was an older unhoused man who could no longer care for him, Webb said. The man asked Turdle if he wanted a dog, and that was that. “When Zackery had no one — when he slept in the streets and the gutters — he slept with Max,” his mother said.
McGee said people in Venice had mixed feelings about The Dirty Kids. “They hated us because we're trashy looking, we're poor, we're homeless, we're sleeping on the streets,” he said.
At the same time, McGee said the crew looked out for the community. “We make sure people weren't messing around. If other homeless people were trying to break into buildings, we were trying to stop them,” he said.
Still, McGee, Turdle and the rest of The Abbot Kinney Crew were often ticketed for sitting on the ground, sleeping on sidewalks and asking for money or food. “Despite all of that, we still had a family. We still loved each other, so nothing that they did could ever separate us,” McGee said. Whether the average resident liked it or not, The Dirty Kids were part of the Venice community.
During his second year in California, Turdle met a woman at Westminster Dog Park, and they moved in together. His mother taught him to love stargazing, so when the couple had a daughter in 2018, they named her Lyra, after the constellation. After five years, the pair split and Turdle found himself outside once again. For a while, he saw Lyra frequently. But when her mother moved to Arizona, Turdle reeled from the inability to see his child, his family said.
“He wanted to do something for [Lyra], but that was one thing that always ate at him because he didn't have anything,” said his father. “It ate him that he didn't get along with his ex.”
As Turdle nursed his heartache, he also wrestled with an addiction to fentanyl, which he started using after an injury in 2021 or 2022, his mother said. The drug — a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than morphine — has become a major problem for those living on the city’s streets. In 2019, 18% of fatal overdoses among the county’s unhoused population involved fentanyl. In 2023, that share peaked at 70%, but it has since fallen. The only other drugs involved in more deaths of this kind were methamphetamines.
In 2024, Turdle met another woman, who Webb said helped him get clean. They lived together in West Covina. She also became pregnant with a boy, Gunner. The couple split before their son was born, and Turdle returned to the streets.
After more than a decade in Los Angeles, Webb said her son had made plans to move back in with her. She kept in touch with his exes, she said, and was going to make sure Turdle was a part of his children’s lives. “I'd finally gotten him to a place where he was gonna come home, and he just wanted to go across the country with Max one more time,” she said. “So, Saturday, he was leaving to come home, and he died Wednesday.”
April 2, 2025
Cheyenne Barrett first met Turdle in 2018 on the Venice Boardwalk, when he stopped by The Wee Chippy, a popular seafood stand where she worked. “We had the cheapest fries on the boardwalk. It was three or $4, and you could get a big bucket,” she said. “Feed everybody.” Barrett became friends with Turdle and his crew, hanging out late nights at her place and watching movies.
Early last year, she started hanging out with Turdle every day after she clocked out, getting burgers and beers or decompressing at the pier. Although Barrett had just turned 30, she said spending time with Turdle made her feel like a teenager again. In late March, Turdle called Barrett his girlfriend in front of her cousin. She didn’t argue. Two days later, on April 2, 2025, they were enjoying drinks with two other friends inside a tent at Westminster Dog Park.
According to pre-trial witness testimonies, Tyrone Jones came by the tent looking for his girlfriend, who was enjoying the day with Barrett and Turdle. Jones and his girlfriend went to the parking lot, a few steps away from the tent, and started arguing. Turdle went out to take a look. “Zackery is like our big brother outside,” one witness later testified, “so he would go check up on situations.” In her testimony, Barrett recalled hearing her friend scream, prompting her to start packing up the tent. That’s when she heard a gunshot.
Barrett ran from the park, and a few minutes laterm she heard a second gunshot. She hurriedly searched for Turdle at a liquor store and other spots nearby, asking people she ran into whether they had seen him. Then, Barrett heard her friend screaming out her name. She followed her friend’s voice back to the parking lot of the dog park, where she found Turdle's body.
Mark Prarat, 59, had been living in his 2002 Ford E-150 in the Westminster parking lot for more than a year when he heard a gunshot. Even though no one told him who had been killed, Prarat said he knew it was Turdle. After the scene was cleaned up, he left his van and walked in circles around the blood-stained pavement. “What I kind of focused on was just chanting what's called the Mahā-mantra, the Hare Krishna mantra,” Prarat said, which is typically intended to cleanse the heart of negativity. “I don't know why. I've never done it before, but I did it.”
He’d known Turdle for just two months, but then and there, he started building a makeshift memorial, first by plucking flowers nearby and later with some he bought. Others who knew Turdle soon adorned it with a medley of ornaments, including candles, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle doll and a Barbie skateboard deck. Prarat took down the memorial in mid-July, after 101 days, he said. All the items were then divvied up among Turdle’s loved ones.
The search for Turdle's killer
Immediately after her son’s death, Webb set to work on multiple fronts. She spent six months tracking down his dog Max, she said, who is now in his “forever home” with a dear friend of Turdle’s.
Meanwhile, she tried to correct the narrative of her son and his death. “I got angry,” Webb said. “That was not going to be my son's legacy and story, that he was just some homeless man that nobody cared about that died at a dog park.” So she reached out to reporters, including Michelle McPhee at Los Angeles Magazine, to share pictures and personal details about Turdle. She also took to social media, writing comments under local news stories to tell the world about her son.
Finally, Webb stayed in touch with LAPD Det. Jared Timmons, who worked on the search for her son’s killer.
The team of detectives obtained security footage showing a silver or gray Maserati, which was registered to Jones, racing away shortly after the shooting. The LAPD later traced it back to Jones' home, only a block away from the park. No one was there, but according to court records, officers found ammunition matching the 9mm shell casing retrieved from the scene of the shooting.
Jones’ ex-girlfriend testified that he held her against her will for weeks after Turdle was killed. During that time, she told the court Jones abused her and forced her to stay in a walk-in closet. Detectives received warrants allowing them to track Jones’ phone lines and internet activity. On May 9, 2025, more than five weeks after Turdle was killed, they arrested him at his cousin’s apartment in Florence.
Last month, Jones was convicted on eight charges, including injuring a spouse, kidnapping, false imprisonment by violence and first-degree murder. According to court records, he had previous felony convictions for assault with a deadly weapon and human trafficking and was not allowed to own a gun.
Multiple LAPD homicide detectives who have worked cases involving unhoused victims told LAist and The LA Local that illegal gun possession is common. According to the department’s annual crime report, the LAPD seized more than 80,000 firearms from 2015 through 2025. Last year, it recovered 8,650, over a thousand more than in 2024.
Jones is held at North County Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Castaic. He will be sentenced June 18.
Remembering Turdle
On a warm day in January, a few of those who knew Turdle gathered in Westminster Dog Park. McGee, who arrived first, said their numbers would have likely been greater, but The Dirty Kids were a thing of the past. Some were no longer on the streets, thankfully. Others were in prison or had died from drugs or violence.
McGee, who is housed these days, said he has battled suicidal thoughts since the age of 12. Remembering his friend Turdle helps keep those thoughts at bay. “I think of him when I wake up,” he said, “just a constant reminder in my ear every day that I still want to be something.” He’s also reminded of Turdle by his guitar, which found its way to him. McGee said it’s the third one he’s received from a friend who had died, and he’s not sure how to feel about that.
He recounted his friendship with Turdle for about an hour, when another former Dirty Kid showed up. Mason Lum, who goes by Prince, reminisced for about 15 minutes before he was overcome with emotion. Westminster Dog Park was previously beloved by their crew, where they held many birthdays and played with their legion of dogs. Now, a pall hung over it.
Barrett arrived next. She had a hard time talking about Turdle, but thought it was important to tell his story. Barrett lamented not having more time with him. The greater loss, she said, was for his children, Lyra and Gunner. “It's not fair,” she said, “because they don't get any time, you know, the babies.”
Zackery Alan Melton loved Texas, and that is where he was laid to rest last year in April — in the town of Llano, next to his paternal grandfather. Since then, hundreds of people have reached out to his family, even some who weren’t on good terms with him. “You find out how well you raised your kid from other people,” his father said.
“I have so much pride mixed with devastation,” his mother said, “and it's a very odd place to be.”
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