WYLIE - Police say a 28-year-old Wylie man was beaten to death by a group of teens all because he asked them to stop speeding near his home.
Since June, Jonathan Bird lived on South Third Street with his fiancé, Coti Duer, and cared for her three kids like they were his own.
"What these kids did was senseless," Duer said. "He he didn't fight back because they were kids."
Bird had just returned home from a fishing trip Saturday night with Duer's oldest son when the altercation happened.
"He phone called me that they were home so we could head home to meet them," Duer said. "And within five minutes of that phone call,
I received a phone call from my 14-year old-son - hysterical - that Jonathan wasn't breathing and he had got beat up."
Just before midnight, police said a driver of a 2002 Dodge Ram sped around a corner near the Bird-Duer home with his tires squealing. Bird asked him to slow down.
"They didn't like it that he told them to slow down," said Det. Venece Perepickza, a Wylie police spokeswoman. "Within minutes, he was back with a truckload full of people and they literally beat him to death."
A friend ran outside to break up the fight and called 911, but Bird was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The five suspects were arrested within hours. Four of them were only 16 years old. Police said they were neighborhood kids.
"There was a witness that actually saw them fleeing in their truck and he could identify two of them by name," Perepickza said.
The fifth suspect was 17-year-old Ethan Dorris. All of the teens were charged with murder.
This was the second tragic loss for the Duer family this year.
"First they lost their father; now, they've lost their father figure for a second time, eight months to the exact date," Duer said.
The children's biological father was named Jonathan as well.
