An Indiana man convicted by a jury last month in the killings of two teens found shot to death in a Fort Wayne garage in 2021 was sentenced to 140 years in prison on Tuesday.
After listening to family member after family member sob through their testimony, convicted killer Tre Zwieg was asked if he had anything to say.
“There is nothing,” he told Allen Superior Court Judge Fran Gull before she handed down a sentence of 140 years in prison after being convicted of the double murder in May.
Zwieg, appearing this time in orange prison garb with the pallor of someone who’s spent 552 days in jail, was there with his attorney, Gregory Fumarolo, who did the apologizing for him.
“He’s sympathetic to the Cole and Ramirez families,” Fumarolo said but asked Gull to take into consideration that Zwieg suffered from anxiety and depression for which he is medicated and was only 19 when he shot and killed 16-year-old Juan Jose Ramirez and 19-year-old Brandon Steave Cole on December 3, 2021.
No mitigating factors seemed to outweigh the nature of the crime, the fact there were two victims and those victims were young.
“One didn’t even really know you,” Gull noted, referring to Ramirez who was from Ypsilanti, Michigan and was Cole’s cousin. Zwieg was also ordered to pay Ana Maria Gomez Velasco, mother of Brandon Cole, $17,035 for funeral expenses, ironic that at one point she was facing charges for attempting to punch Zwieg at an earlier court hearing, missed, and clocked a bailiff instead. The bailiff decided to forgive the tiny woman who acted out of grief.
Allen County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tom Chaille told Gull that Zwieg was in illegal business activities with the two victims and apparently believed they had cheated him. One theory put forward by the defense was that Zwieg believed the victims had it out for his younger brothers.
The two were staying with Zwieg at an apartment at The Summit at Ridgewood, close to a home on Cumberland Avenue where Zwieg proposed stealing some heavy chains from the garage. Dressed in ski masks and gloves, the attire the three preferred as evidenced in photos and videos, Chaille said Zwieg lured the two others to the garage before he arrived with at least one 9mm handgun and shot them in the back. They fell where they were standing.
Zwieg then circled the two as they lay on the cold garage floor, repeatedly shooting them. Cole was shot three times and Ramirez shot sixteen times.
The number of shots pumped into Ramirez’s body was repeated by the victim’s mother, Shelly Ramirez, over and over again. It was difficult for her not to directly address Zwieg as she sat next to Chaille in the courtroom.
“I’m not going to ask you why you took my sunshine,” Ramirez said, often addressing Zwieg instead of the judge. “I know my son’s personality. There wasn’t anything that he could have done for you to shoot him sixteen times.”
Later, she said, “Tre, you’re a punk and a coward. You ‘feared’ for you life. My son didn’t get a chance to fight for his. You didn’t even know where he was from.” More than once, she called him “pure evil, true evil.”
Ramirez and others said they neither saw nor heard any remorse from Zwieg who sat motionless, often looking down while family members spoke.
“I’m so broken,” Ramirez continued,” and called Zwieg a “cold blooded killer.”
His aunt, April Vasquez, who flew in from Colorado and wore her decorated Army uniform in court, said she was given the news just before she was to take her eight-year-old daughter to a Girl Scout event.
“My sister told me to go and be happy for my daughter,” something so difficult carrying the knowledge that “my nephew was murdered. “ She wore the uniform because her nephew was so proud of her.
Juan Gomez, Brandon’s older brother, said his brother is happy now.
“You’re going to suffer here in a cage,” Gomez said. “He shot him in the back of the head like a coward.” Even with the suffering the boys’ families endure, “all three families hurt,” Gomez added.
Several of Cole’s siblings spoke as their mother, Gomez Velasco, sat in courtroom. Later she spoke to Chaille and Chief Counsel Tesa Helge in Spanish with her daughters doing the translation. One sister said that Brandon “didn’t expect this” and considered Tre a friend.
Zwieg told Gull he intended to appeal his sentence. Earlier Fumarolo asked for some leniency.
“In the constitution, reformation is the basis of the penal code, not vindictive justice. You could impose an astronomical sentence. I ask that you do not do that…so that Tre has some hope for the future.”
Chaille called Zwieg “manipulative,” and fully aware of his actions. He was a high school graduate and used “sophistication” when he spoke.
“Nobody knows, Mr. Zwieg, why what happened happened,” Gull said, adding that the emotion from the families was “palpable.”
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