Gun violence has turned our ‘family upside down’

June is Gun Violence Awareness Month, which was created in an effort to raise awareness surrounding the issue of needless and senseless gun violence. In Clarksville-Montgomery County, there have been eight homicides and seven have involved gun violence.  Three families in Clarksville share their stories of how gun violence forever changed their lives.

Billy and Jamie Pace, whose son, Billy “BJ” Pace was murdered in December 2016, explain how  gun violence has affected them. 

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn.- Billy “BJ” Pace visited his parents, Billy, Sr. and Jamie Pace, on December 15, 2016 and in his usual habit, kissed his mom and told her he loved her as soon as he came in the house.

With excitement, he told his parents his plans that day which included packing to go to Virginia with his girlfriend Jessica “Summer” Simo.

They didn’t know that when he left their home that day, it’d be the last time they saw him alive.

“The last thing he did was kiss his mom on the forehead and tell her he loved her,” Billy Pace, Sr. said.

Later, Billy Sr., sent a text message to BJ asking how packing was going.

There was no response.

“I figured they were busy, but an hour later his girlfriend, Summer, started asking if I’d seen him and was saying it was time for them to leave, but he was nowhere to be found,” he said.

When Jamie, his mother, heard about Summer’s message, a horrific feeling began to grow in the pit of her stomach. When he didn’t respond to Jamie’s calls or messages, which he always did, her suspicions grew.

“Her response was, ‘They’ve done something to him,'” Billy, Sr. said. “In the end, she was correct. It was a mother’s intuition.”

“I never liked his girlfriend … she was manipulative. She lied to me before. She gravitated to my husband,” Jamie Pace said. “The more I listened to her talk about not being able to find Billy, something inside me said, ‘Something isn’t right. It’s not like Billy to go and nobody hear from him.’ …He would never disappear. He had two children and had just spent time with his daughter. He would never just disappear.”

The Pace family filed a missing person’s report and family, friends and law enforcement searched for BJ Pace for three-days fearing the worse.

Sadly, BJ Pace’s body was found in a wooded area on Ross Lane on December 21, 2016. It was determined he’d likely been murdered on December 16.

He was shot twice in the head and was covered with leaves and branches. An autopsy was performed, and his death was ruled a homicide. The motive for the murder remains unclear.

“Gun violence has turned our family upside down. We don’t have BJ anymore and don’t get to see him anymore other than in pictures. If we want to talk to him, we have to travel four hours to east Tennessee and look at a plot in the ground, with a stone with his name on it. ” – Parents of Billy Pace, Jr.

Billy Sr. was shocked, when “Summer” Simo was arrested along with a then 17-year-old boy, Kristopher Martin, said to be her daughter’s boyfriend. They were both charged with the first-degree murder of Billy Pace, Jr.

The pain didn’t stop as the family endured one jury trial and are now preparing for a possible second trial.

“I have a ton of respect for the prosecutors, but when it comes to having a jury deliberate on the merit and evidence of the case, we are asking 12 people to make a decision in one or two days that we as a family and the prosecutor have combed over for months even years,” Billy Sr. said. “We as a family were able to piece together this whole case.”

In the end, the jury convicted Kristopher Martin of second degree murder instead of first-degree.

“(The jury’s verdict) completely blew me away … This was an intentional killing!,” Billy Sr. said. “This person deliberately shot my child in the back of head twice, left him in the woods and covered him with leaves and trees and then lied and said he had no idea where he was.”

In December 2019, Martin was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He has since filed a motion for a new trial that is scheduled to be heard by Judge Jill Ayers on September 10, 2020. Simo is scheduled to be in court on July 30 to discuss her case. She has a tentative trial date scheduled for August 17th.

“Gun violence has turned our family upside down. We don’t have BJ anymore and don’t get to see him anymore other than in pictures,” they said. “If we want to talk to him, we have to travel four hours to east Tennessee and look at a plot in the ground, with a stone with his name on it. It’s not a day that goes by that my 12-year-old son is not in tears because his brother is gone. Unfortunately, it was a senseless act involving a gun. .. I don’t blame the gun, it’s the people who done it. It took someone to pull that trigger.”

Jamie Pace said her two grandchildren have suffered deeply from losing their father.

“The hardest part is knowing his children don’t have their father,” Jamie Pace said. “His daughter won’t have him to walk her down the aisle or be there when she needs her dad. His son won’t have him to be there. It hurts really bad for me, but it kills me even more for his children, because they will never have their dad.”