When Jocarl Bureau became upset, his eyes got huge and he started yelling, according to his ex-girlfriend.

“When he gets mad about something, he doesn’t think,” Loreal Williams told police in an interview last April.

The things that set him off were small, but his responses could quickly turn violent, according to court documents. When an ex-girlfriend received a text from another guy, he yanked her hair and warned her not to cross him. When his mother refused to give him a ride to his adult diversion program, he pushed her with both hands out the front door and then threw a glass plate at her microwave when she told him he needed to leave.

And when his girlfriend failed to find a phone number he needed while he was behind bars at the Merrimack County jail, he threatened her, saying into the telephone, “I guarantee, I’m gonna give all you (N-words) a reason to call the police. I swear to God, watch,” according to court records.

Sometimes, his actions spilled over into the court system. Bureau was convicted in 2014 for slapping Williams in the face. In court documents requesting restraining orders, she wrote that he grabbed her arms, jabbed his fingers into her face while yelling, and once threw a fork at her head.

The most recent and serious charge Bureau faced was second-degree murder. In February, he was accused of killing his
3-year old-daughter, Jayleah; prosecutors allege months of physical abuse before her death.

Court records show Bureau has a history of physical violence toward women, including ex-girlfriends, his mother, a girlfriend’s mother and a female police officer, whom he was charged with assaulting when he was 17. This pattern of behavior is highlighted in a string of misdemeanor charges filed in the Manchester and Concord court systems, starting when Bureau was still in his teens.

The 22-year-old Bureau has a record that includes 15 criminal cases and two petitions for restraining orders. Most of the charges were misdemeanors, including simple assault, stalking and domestic violence. Bureau was acquitted of some, convicted of others and is awaiting trial on two more.

But his pattern of facing low-level criminal charges ended in February when he was accused of murder. Jayleah died on March 15, 2016, from massive internal bleeding caused by blunt-force trauma, and prosecutors say beatings – evidenced by the bruises all over the child’s body – led up to her death.

Bureau, who is fighting the charges, maintains his daughter died from choking on her breakfast, and that the bruises were from him trying to resuscitate her with chest compressions.

A tumultuous relationship

Williams filed – and then withdrew – her first restraining order against Bureau in 2012. The couple were on and off in the years since, but Williams later told police she believed her boyfriend’s behavior had changed for the better when they got back together in 2015. He would be nice to her until something set him off, she said.

“I didn’t think that it would keep happening,” she said of their fights at a recent trial at Merrimack Superior Court, “I thought everything would change, because after we would fight, sometimes everything would be fine.”

In high school, Jocarl Bureau was a star basketball player for the Manchester High School West Blue Knights. The varsity starter proved himself in his first year on the court, helping lead his team to victory over rival schools and netting the most points in close games. His teachers and coaches said basketball helped keep the 17-year-old focused and in school.

Outside of class and sports, he was already known to Manchester police. Bureau had a court record stemming from a couple times he drove without a license, as well as an altercation with a female police officer in 2011.

Manchester West was also where Bureau started dating Loreal Williams, a short, pretty girl with brown eyes who consistently made the honor roll. Williams got pregnant in early 2012, around the same time Bureau was facing felony sexual assault charges brought by another woman.

The young woman asked for the case to be dropped a few months later, and the Hillsborough County Attorney’s office determined there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute. In the meantime, Bureau had been kicked off his basketball team, suspended from school and barred from playing basketball at the Boys & Girls Club or Salvation Army gymnasiums while he faced charges.

His mother, Amy Bureau, told the New Hampshire Union Leader in April 2012 that the charges changed her son’s demeanor and caused his grades to drop.

“He’s been more emotional than usual, more on edge,” she said.

Loreal and Jocarl’s daughter, Jayleah, was born in October, 2012. A couple months later, the first signs of trouble surfaced in the couple’s relationship – evidenced by Williams’s request for a restraining order against Bureau.

Williams said she feared for her safety because Bureau had “smacked” her, threatened her, grabbed her by the arm and poked her face while screaming, according to court documents.

“My baby’s father was also screaming and cursing with my two-month-old baby in his arms,” Williams wrote in the order, which she later withdrew. “When he gets angry, he looks very threatening and walks toward me like he wants to hurt me ... during the incident, he had to be held back a couple times or he was going to be violent.”

Williams said Bureau also called her degrading names and told her she was a bad mother.

“He calls me a bad mom all the time, which I don’t think is right ’cause I’ve been the one taking care of (Jayleah), also bringing her to her appointments,” Williams wrote. “I don’t feel safe with my daughter there, they are all very violent people.”

Separation and reconciliation

Even after the couple broke up, Bureau continued to threaten Williams, court documents show. He was charged with criminal threatening in 2014 after calling her and saying, “When I f- - - you up, don’t tell me there wasn’t a reason.”

The day before, Bureau had also been charged with criminal mischief, accused of throwing a plate at his mother’s microwave. He spent a night in jail on April 1, 2014, and then left for Alabama to live with family shortly thereafter, with the two warrants still open.

Telling friends he was still “laying low,” he came back to New Hampshire in August 2015, and he, Williams and Jayleah moved into a Canton Circle home. With the criminal mischief and criminal threatening charges still hanging over his head, Bureau had another court order to worry about: a 2014 restraining order that he stay away from Williams was still in effect.

Williams was working a full-time job and needed someone home to care for Jayleah during the day after she could no longer afford child care, she later told police. Bureau, who was unemployed, agreed to help. However, by moving back into the house, Bureau was violating the old restraining order handed down by a judge in 2014.

“Ain’t tryna get caught up wit (sic) these warrants before I got the money to get em gone ya know,” he wrote in Facebook messages later obtained by police.

Jayleah died on March 15, 2016. State prosecutors note that Bureau did not dial 911 on the day his daughter died, desperately calling Williams’s cellphone number seven times instead. After she called an ambulance, he went running outside their home with his daughter’s limp body in his arms, crying and screaming for emergency responders to help his daughter, according to witnesses.

Concord Hospital staff later told police that Bureau was very agitated when he and Williams arrived at the hospital, waiting while doctors tried to get Jayleah to breathe again, according to Concord police Detective Wade Brown, who testified at Bureau’s probable cause hearing last month.

Hospital staff told police Bureau was hysterical, curled up in the fetal position under a sink and apologizing to his daughter repeatedly, according to Brown. A hospital staff member later told police they overheard him say “I didn’t mean to,” although police said Bureau did not specify what he meant, Brown added.

By the time Concord police arrived at the hospital on March 15, Bureau was gone. Brown testified that when police tried to get in touch with him, they were contacted by a lawyer instead.

Bureau was not charged in Jayleah’s death until February 2017, but he had been serving jail time for almost a year, stemming from old warrants and even more new charges, including ones that he threatened Williams and her family, calling them from jail. Two months after Jayleah’s death, Williams gave birth to her and Jocarl’s second child – a son.

On Aug. 30, 2016, Williams filed a petition for another restraining order, just in case Bureau was released.

“I’m asking that the courts grant this order to keep me and my son safe,” she wrote. “I fear that when he is out, he will show up at my home.”

(Ella Nilsen can be reached at 369-3322, enilsen@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @ella_nilsen.)

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