"You think that was a different Jerry there basically?" asked an Action News reporter.
"Of course," said his sister, Julie Vue. "I mean, I can't even still picture right now what was going through his mind, or what made him do that."
The fugitive task force found 26-year-old /*Jerry Vue*/ in the garage of Julie's home last week. After he started shooting, officers fired back and eventually killed him.
Vue's family doesn't defend what he did in his last moments. Those who spoke to him in the year he was a fugitive say they tried to convince him to turn himself in. But they say the man who opened fire on police was not the same man they knew growing up.
To the fugitive task force rushing in to arrest him last week, Vue was a loose cannon -- a man who had pledged to go down shooting after staying hidden for 16 months.
Court documents uncovered by Action News paint a similar picture. The mother of his four children said Jerry held her at gunpoint during the June 2012 kidnapping that led to his fugitive status. She was convinced he was going to kill her and Fresno County sheriff's investigators are convinced she's telling the truth. But Vue's family says it's completely out of character for Jerry.
"He's not even like that," said his brother, Lao Vue. "He's real kind, super sensitive, super good guy, you know what I mean?"
Family members remember a kid who would do anything to help anyone.
ABC30 spoke to co-workers at the SPCA who remember him the same way. But the accusations against him seem to have weighed on him, changed his personality.
Vue's sisters didn't want us to show their faces, but they tell Action News the final showdown revealed a man who had grown tired of fighting the lies that got him in trouble.
"Maybe he just didn't have any more faith," said Julie Vue. "That's what I truly believe is he had no more faith in anybody listening to him, so he flipped or I don't know what."
It was in Julie's garage that the fugitive task force ultimately found Jerry. Julie wasn't home at the time, and says she didn't know he was there or how he even knew where she lived.
"I talked to some of your neighbors and they said they'd seen Jerry around there for 3 or 4 months, that he does stuff like take out the garbage, so in that 3 or 4 months, you'd never seen him you're telling me?" an Action News reporter asked her.
"No, I'd never seen him," she said.
Julie says her other brothers are often at her house and could be confused for Jerry. She has since left the apartment stained by the memory of a brother's death, but she knows the same memory may still haunt the parole agents, sheriff's deputies and U.S. marshals he encountered there.
"If I could [say] on my brother's behalf, I'm sorry, because I know that's something that the Jerry I knew would not have done so my prayers and thoughts are with them," she said.
None of the family members have been charged with helping Jerry stay hidden so long.
Jerry's ex also spoke to Action News late Wednesday. She said he was a super sweet guy, except when he got jealous. But he was extremely controlling, didn't trust her at all, and often beat her when he suspected anything. She said it felt like love drove him crazy.
