By JASON GORDON
Jerry Joseph was named his district’s newcomer of the year as a sophomore on the Odessa Permian varsity basketball team this season.
Only problem was, Joseph was actually a 22-year-old naturalized citizen from Haiti named Guerdwich Montimere.
Montimere was arrested and charged with presenting false identification to a peace officer after admitting the deception.
Montimere was released from the Ector County Detention Center after an unknown person posted $115 of his $500 bond, according to the Odessa American.
Montimere also played with a local summer basketball team, which included several Hays High students, at various times over the past year.
“We met him last April or May,” said John Kimbro, one of the summer team’s coaches. “A guy we know well said he had a kid who was an orphan from Haiti, and we were willing to work with him like we’ve done with several different kids in tough situations through the years.”
Kimbro said he was shocked when the news broke that Montimere was really 22-years old.
“He spent nights in our homes; he went to church with us,” Kimbro said. “We hurt for everyone involved, including the kid.”
Kimbro said Montimere presented a birth certificate stating his name was Jerry Joseph and his birth date was January 1, 1994, to get onto the summer basketball team. He played approximately eight tournaments with the local team during various times over the past year.
“He’s a big athletic kid, but we had bigger kids on the team than Jerry,” Kimbro said. “We believed what his birth certificate said.”
According to the Odessa American, Montimere graduated from Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2007 after leading Dillard to the Class 5A state semifinal basketball game. Montimere then moved to Freeport, Ill., where he had signed a scholarship to play basketball at Highland Community College.
After a few months, he dropped out and moved back to Florida, Highland basketball coach Pete Norman told USA Today last week.No one heard from Montimere until he moved to Odessa under the name Jerry Joseph in February 2009.
Permian’s athletic director Leon Fuller was also blindsided by the announcement Montimere had deceived the school.
“I feel like I was hit by a ton of bricks,” Fuller told the Odessa American. “In my 50 years in education, I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
