warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

This is 41  year old Tyrone Hassel Jr.

Just minutes earlier , his son was found mysteriously shot dead in thedriveway of his home.

Tragically,this happened while his son , Seargeant Tyron Hassel III was home for the holidays at his father’s home,spending  New Years’ Eve  with his wfie and their child.

His wife , Kemia Hassel , was the one who first found Tyrone outside the house,she immediately called  police and was clearly panicked and extremely distressed.

 At first , officers thought the tragedy was the result of a robbery or a case of mistaken identity.

But they would be horribly wrong.

What Tyrone Hassel Jr. didn’t know yet…

Was that his daughter – in – law, Kemia , was hiding a dark secret that would  ruin the family’s life.

As the  investigation continued , detectives would uncover a toxid relationship and a twisted  conspiracy.

With  Kemia at the  very center of it all .

At the scene , officers immediately  found the victim slumped against a full -size pickup truck,he had serious injuries,multiple gunshot wounds,and heavy bleeding,but he was still breathing at the time.

Words spreads quickly in a small community.

So family members and neighbors were all on the scene within  minutes.

Kemia and Tyrone’s young son ,just over a year old, was still in the residence, officers conducted a search to make  sure the child hadn’t be harmed in any way.

After  locating the child , in the emotional  and intense scene , paramedics were simultaneously working on  the victim.

His wife was trying to get into the ambulance to with  her husband.

With Kemia clearly distressed and more people  gathering at the scene, officers had to balance two things at once.

While paramedics were working to save Tyrone, police also needed to secure the area, collectt evidence , and make sure no one accidentally tampered with enything .

As one officer tried to calm Kemia down, he also began asking her some question since she was the one who had first found Tyrone and called the police.

Tyrone  returned to the house just after 11 : 00 p.m., after going inside  and bringing food to his family, he stepped back outside.

That’s when his wife heard gunshots coming from the side of the house near the driveway.

She run outside and found her husband lying next to his pickup truck in the driveway ,badly injured and suffering from pultiple gunshot wounds.

5 YEARS Before

The story  of How Tyrone met his wife goes back about 5 years before this tragedy.

Tyrone was starting his second year of College when he decided to join the Army.

In 2015, he met Kemia while they both serving in the  military and stationed at Fort Carson.

Their relationship moved fast and quickly became serious,things became even more serious when Kemia found out she was pregnant.

At the time of Seargeant Hassel’s murder, Kemia,who was 22 years old,and Sergeant Hassel were on block leave from Fort Stewart.

Kemia was working as a truck triver .and Seargeant  Hassel was serving as a wheel mechanic.

At that point,  police didn’t allow Tyrone Hassel Jr. or Kemia  to leave the scene.

They were dealing with a lot of unanswered questions and a killer still on the loose who needed  to be found as quickly as  possible.

After speaking with people close to him,  police learned that Tyrone didn’t have  any known  enemies, nothing  that would explain something like this.

They then began carefully processing the scene.

There was blood  on the truck and blood across the driveway.

Multiple shell casings  where also found scattered around where Tyrone had fallen.

The first thing police suspected was that this may have been a robbery gone wrong.

But Sergeant Hassel  still had his money , his phone, and his car keys on him, so that possibility was quickly ruled out.

By looking at how the shooting  happened, the shots hitting Tyrone in the head , face , neck and shoulders.

It was clear this was a personal attack, not a random act of violence.

Detectives also noticed that some rounds went into the garage.

Which showed that the shooter was positioned behind him while Tyrone was standing at the doorway of his truck.

One of the first leads detectives got was that Tyrone had gone to Walmart the night of the murder to buy ammunition.

The rounds he bought  were 9 mm, the same type used in his shooting, this raised an important question.

Why was he buying ammo? and was it for self- defense?

The Wallmart footage clearly shows that he ran into to other people while he was there.

Maybe there was some sort of feud with these customers ,but it’s not something  the police couldn’t track.

Now, they’re working to identify these two individuals to see if there’s any connection between them and the shooting that  happened just a few hours later.

Around 3:30 p.m. the next day,police retruned to Tyrone Hassel Jr’s home, they showed him screenshots taken  from the Walmart surveillance video , hoping he might  recognize the two people Tyrone III  had interacted with .

Through  the investigation ,detectives conducted interviews

And eventually learned that the two men Tyrone had interacted with at Walmart were just his high school friends with no connection with the shooting, with no  clear motive or useful leads , the police  were still at the very beginning of their investigation.

It didn’t take long for the next lead to come directly  from Tyrone Hassel  Jr himself.

He started going through social media, carfully reviewing posts on Facebook to see if anything could  point to who might be responsible for the crime.

When  he came across something that seemed  suspicious, he immediately went to the police departement to report it .

He believed the killer might have actually  been looking for Tyrone’s stepbrother, who  at the time was dealing with some personal conflicts with other people.

Because of that , police considered the  possibility that this was a targeted hit meant for the stepbrother.

A case of mistaken identity that tragically  ended with Tyrone being  killed instead.

Police interviewed Tyrone’s stepbrother and took his statement, then followed up by speaking with other witnesses connected to him.

They pushed this lead as far as  they could  and it took about a week to interview everyone involved.

But ones again , it went nowhere .

As the investigations continued , the evidence police gathered made one thing clear the stepbrother was not involved.

There was no indication that he or anyone he had issues with  played any role in the shooting.

On top of that , his appearance was very different , he had long dreadlocks down to his shoulders ,making a case of mistaken  identity  with  Tyrone highly unlikely.

In cases like this, when police don’t have an initial suspect, they forced to follow  every possible lead, after that , police  began  receiving a large number of tips from the community.

In Several of those tips, callers said Tyron had been seen in the roller rink area  where  he was involved in a verbal confrontation with another  person .

Detectives then located Tyrone’s friend , Dylan.

They  brought him to the police station to talk in more  detail about what had happened and see if it could be connected to the shooting.

He mentioned that there had been a verbal altercation with a guy  known  by the street named  Drama.

Investigators decided to follow up on that lead to see if it had any connection to Tyrone’s murder.

They also brought in two other friends  for interviews, hoping to get a clearer picture of what  really happened.

Dead end after dead end.

The process  of chasing leads that go nowhere can be exhausting for investigators.

But what detectives still didn’t know was that one of those tips would eventually become the key to solving the case.

The person responsible had been right there the whole time, standing close to the family and the police, appearing to grieve along with everyone else.

 A revelation that would soon shock the entire community.

Through the investigation,a resident came forward and reported something unusual,on the night of the murder,they noticed a vehicle backed into a driveway at a  residence, that detail ended up giving detectives one of their first  major clues.

The vehicle was described as a black foour -door car that had backed into the driveway of a vacant house that was listed for sale.

Detectives were able to get a license plate reader hit on that vehicle , tracking it as it passed through Illinois toll booths captured on surveillance cameras.

That plate came back to someone in the US military , serving in the same battalion as Sgt . Tyrone  Hassel III, the owner was identified as Jeremy Cuellar,a memeber of the same squad as Tyrone.

Using the  license plate data, investigators were able to place his vehicle near the scene of  the  crime on the day of the shooting,for the first time , the investigation was starting to show real progress, and police finally had a name.

Before detectives spoke directly with Jeremy,  they immediately contacted investigators  at Fort Stewart working with the US Army.

Army investigators began going through the platoon connected to the case and interviewed several service members.

One of them was  Sergeant Bacon .

He had personal firsthand knowledge of Jeremy Cuellar and kemia Hassel, information that would quickly become critical to the case.

 The erlationship between Jeremy and Tyrone’s wife turnes out to be a crucial piece of the puzzle, it  adds real weight to the motive and helps explain why certain things  may have happened.

Once Kemia’s name comes into the picture,police have no choice but to focys on her next, a turn in the case that would shock everyone.

But the detectives still need the full story.

Was Kemia being stalked by Jeremy with him becoming obsessed and ultimately deciding to eliminate what he  saw as his  rival?,or was she actually part of it ?aware of what was going to happen and involved from the start.

The first striking thing about Kemia in the interview was how cold and calculated she was, definitely not normal for an average person,you could even say  she manipulated Jeremy into pulling the trigger.

What’s clear though is that she was a much more active participant part of the plan from the start with Jeremy following through on her instructions.

Often suspects won’t say much  to the police , but when she confessed during the interrogation, almost everything she talked about was about herself.

How things affected her,why it had to be done, and how calculated it all was whithout a doubt, she’s one of the coldest people you could ever come across in any true crime story.

At the same time , the Army’s criminal investigation  division in Georgia  Brought Jeremy in for an interview,coordinated with local law enforcement.

Both  interviews were conducted at the same time, making sure Jeremy and Kemia had no chance to cmmunicate with each other.

Exactly , the opposite of Kemia , Jeremy didn’t say a word.

He invoked his right to remain silent and at that point ,the interview had to be ended.

During the investigation , the mounting evidence against Kemia was overwhelming.

Her confession made it clear this was a planned and premeditated act and that Jeremy had come up from Illinois to carry out the homicide.

Kemia wanted her husband dead because she felt he wasn’t  taking care of her properly, she believed she was overburdened and had too much responsibility.

Her narcissistic traits  became  even more apparent during one police interview when she was asked if Sgt . Hassel had life insurance.

She casually mentioned she would receive  $ 400,000  from the army after his death.

The financial motive was clearly a factor in the crime.

But what really happened that night was that Tyrone was actually bringing  food back for her and  their one year old  son when the hit accured,Kemia was at least as involved, if not more so, than Jeremy,he was just happy to be the one pulling the trigger.

In the end , Kemia was arrested for first -degree  premeditated murder.

On August 29th, 2019, about  eight months after Tyrone’s killing ,  she was sentenced to life in  prison without  the possibility of parole, she will never see freedom again.

Jeremy  also pleaded guilty to second -degree murder on July 30th,2019, and was sentenced to 65 years in prison ,with his earliest eligibility for parole  at age 90, it’s extremely unlikely he will ever get out.

He later tried to withdraw his plea,but the Michigan Supreme Court refused to hear his  case in 2021.