FORT WORTH, Texas — A 40-year-old restaurant server is in jail after admitting to police and WFAA that he fatally shot his roommate.
Jeff Cory is in Tarrant County Jail facing a murder charge, and in an interview from jail Monday, he explained how and why he killed his friend and roommate Erik Fernandez.
"Something I'll regret for the rest of my life," Cory said. "I've known him for six years. He's one of my best friends."
Cory told WFAA that he met Fernandez several years ago when they were both working at the same restaurant. His family said that Fernandez was a loving father to a teenage girl.
Cory acknowledges that they had had some disagreements as roommates in the past, and Fernandez had nagged him about his drinking and other behavior. He said Fernandez had at times threatened to kick him out of their shared apartment.
Cory said last Wednesday, he went out celebrating with friends after being hired at a new job, and when he arrived home late, he got into an argument with Fernandez.
"All of a sudden, he gets up off the couch and starts yelling at me. And he says, 'Some of us have to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning. I can't believe you're being disrespectful,'" Cory recalled.
Cory said that Fernandez grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him, and he said that's when he reached for a pistol he kept in the house for protection. He said they began wrestling for control of the gun, and then it misfired, hitting Fernandez in the stomach. He admits that what happened next was no accident.
"I shot him once in the face and he twisted to the ground and I heard a noise," said an emotional Cory. "I popped him in the back of the head to make sure he was dead, so he wouldn't suffer."
Cory said he did not call 911 but instead dragged his friend's body into his bedroom and then drove to a nearby lake to get rid of his handgun. The next day, he went to work as if nothing had happened. He even took care of Fernandez's pets. But he said the struggle kept playing out in his head.
"I was scared and I didn't know what to do," Cory said.
Cory finally called 911 on Friday, and when officers arrived at his White Settlement home in the 1200 block of Kimbrough Street, he at first told them that Fernandez had been missing for several days and he had just discovered his body in his room. But under questioning, it didn't take long for him to confess.
"The main reason why I confessed to detectives is because he told me one thing that really affected me," Cory said. "He told me, his daughter is really going to want to know for closure what happened to her father."
Cory now faces a murder charge and a $75,000 bond.
White Settlement police said their investigation is ongoing, and the Tarrant County Medical Examiner has ruled Fernandez's death as a homicide.