Slain Modesto boy’s dad calls for justice, Stockton leaders slam ‘no-snitch’ culture
One week after gunfire tore through a toddler’s birthday party and killed four people, including three children, the father of 14-year-old victim Amari Peterson stood at Stockton City Hall on Tuesday and said he still feels trapped in a nightmare.
“I haven’t been able to eat, sleep. I don’t even know what time it is. I barely know what day it is,” Patrick Peterson told reporters, his voice shaking. “My son is on my mind every day. I feel like he was stripped away from me for nothing.”
Peterson, a Stockton barber and father of five, said he changed his life to be a better man for his children and is now struggling to understand why his son – “the joy of my life” – was killed while his family tried to “have a good time and support other people in the community.”
“I just want my son back,” said Peterson, who with paramedics tried to save Amari’s life before the boy was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. “Money comes and goes. To live in this world, you do need help, and we need all the help that we can possibly get right now – mental health, financial help, whatever it is.”
The news conference opened with a prayer and eulogy by Rev. William DeArmond, a pastor and chaplain.
The Nov. 29 shooting at a Lucile Avenue banquet hall left 14-year-old Peterson, 8-year-olds Maya Lupian and Journey Rose Reotutar Guerrero and 21-year-old Susano Archuleta dead. Thirteen others were wounded. No arrests have been made.
Patrick Peterson used the news conference to plead with anyone withholding information about the shooters.
“If you do know who has something to do with this, I hope that you do the right thing,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, if you don’t do the right thing, it’s just going to continue happening. And the next thing you know, death is going to be at your door.”
‘No-snitch culture’ and a city’s accountability
Vice Mayor Jason Lee, who organized Tuesday’s news conference, said he called it to refocus attention on the victims’ families and to demand long-term investment in preventing violence in Stockton.
Lee recounted his own history with gun violence – shot at 15, his brother murdered when Lee was 19 – and said the trauma of watching Peterson’s interviews on television “triggered” him.
“This is personal,” Lee said. “There’s no other more important conversation right now than making sure these families get the closure that I was able to get when the person responsible for killing my brother and for shooting me were brought to justice.”
Lee said the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office is leading the investigation and should be the only agency speaking publicly about it. But he directly confronted what he called a pervasive “no-snitch culture” in Stockton that is hampering detectives.
“When I got shot, I couldn’t wait to go and testify,” Lee said. “Call me whatever name you want. My brother’s life was more important than what people thought about me in this community.”
“To those who know stuff – this community is a really small community, everybody knows everybody and everybody is talking – I encourage you to come forward,” he said.
Later, he was more blunt: “If you know something, don’t be a coward and not come forward and speak, because Amari deserves you to do that.”
Lee said he recently requested homicide and shooting data for victims 19 and younger since he took office. Reading from a list, he said nearly every young victim was Black or Latino.
“Stockton has not prioritized the lives of children for a long time,” he said. “We talk about it when this type of stuff happens. I’m tired of talking about this.”
Defunded prevention work, rap scene and gang ties
The vice mayor also criticized the City Council for voting down or defunding violence-prevention programs he believes could have helped avert the tragedy.
He cited the council’s March decision to cut ties with the Advance Peace program, which focuses on young people at the highest risk of shooting or being shot, and said the city invests about $190 million in police but only $2 million in prevention services.
“In 2022, I sent an email, when I wasn’t in office, and I said the blood of every child in this community is on the city’s hands if you don’t do something to prevent these type of things from happening,” Lee said. “We need to look at ourselves.”
Advance Peace’s former Stockton program director, Nuri Muhammad, said at the news conference that prevention work has been “undermanned” and underfunded even as the city spends heavily on infrastructure projects.
“If we make an investment in things but don’t make an investment in people, then we’ll always have this type of imbalance,” Muhammad said. “The budget is a moral document. If we don’t have any line items for young people, if we don’t have any line items for the poor, if it doesn’t have any line items for those that are suffering, then there’ll always be some type of imbalance.”
Lee also addressed questions about the city’s rap scene and law-enforcement officials’ statements that the shooting was gang-related and has ties to Stockton’s “rap culture.”
“Hip-hop is a form of art that tells stories in communities that we come from,” said Lee, who works in entertainment in addition to his city role. “But the hip-hop that’s happening in Stockton is being used for pure evil – people talking about crimes they’re committing against families.”
He said he doesn’t blame the music itself, but “the culture and the soul of this city that has allowed this to happen.”
“Family members [are] killing family members because they’re in different gangs,” Lee said. “It’s nonsensical, and it is not what hip-hop was created for.”
Lee thanked high-profile artists such as Cardi B for amplifying Amari’s story and condemning the shooting, and he urged aspiring local musicians not to glorify violence.
“That artwork needs to be art, and not destructive materials that got us here, or potentially helped us get here,” he said.
‘We need all the help we can get’
Peterson said he is grateful for prayers, hugs and donations to his family’s GoFundMe, but said the road ahead is overwhelming.
“It’s something that I’ve got to live with for the rest of my life,” he said. “I really don’t know how me and my family are going to get through this.”
He asked for continued mental-health support and vowed to honor his son by working to keep other children safe once he is strong enough.
“In the future, God willing, when I do get in a better mind state, I want to do something in honor of my son for the community, for the kids,” Peterson said. “The kids are the future. Whatever I can do, or whatever the people can do, to help prevent this from happening again, I need that help, too, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes for that to happen.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2025 at 2:38 PM with the headline "Slain Modesto boy’s dad calls for justice, Stockton leaders slam ‘no-snitch’ culture."
