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Murder victims' families find solace in numbers
Monterey
County Herald | December 22, 2006 Friday
Copyright 2008 Monterey County Herald. All Rights Reserved. Posted with
permission.
By
JULIA REYNOLDS Herald Staff Writer
There is a tiny, frosted Christmas tree in the living room and small children laugh and roll around in front of it. The dozens of framed family photos have left little free space on the walls.
Leticia Peña, also called Lety, rocks her new baby.
"Tina loved the holidays," 19-year-old Lety says. "She was, like, 'Dad, come on, let's decorate the Christmas tree.'"
The Peña family of King City is spending its first Christmas without Lety's big sister Tina.
The 23-year-old's body was found in May on the edge of Wildhorse Canyon Road, near King City.
That night, she had gone to the county fairgrounds with friends. Tina was apparently worried that something was wrong, had hinted to friends that she might be in danger, that someone in her group of acquaintances had it out for her.
Her family said she even text-messaged someone that night, wondering if she was being set up.
Her body was found the next morning. Tina was shot in the head and left where she would quickly be discovered -- a classic gangland "execution-style murder," as the news media like to say. The family said there are plenty of rumors circulating about why Tina was killed, most having to do with petty jealousies.
Though Tina was apparently not involved in the gang life, her oldest sister Nelly, 42, was.
"My sisters are a lot younger. I tried to make sure Lety and Tina were never exposed to that," Nelly said.
"I was the one who my mom could have gotten a call saying 'Your daughter was killed.' But not Tina."
The Peñas are not alone. They are among the scores of families around Monterey County who have lost a young loved one to violence. Like most, they have yet to see an arrest, much less a conviction.
In Salinas, only 35 percent of the 100 homicides between 2000-06 have been solved. This contrasts sharply with the most recent national numbers, where two-thirds of homicides are solved, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Rates for the Monterey County Sheriff's Office's 32 homicide cases for the last six years were not available.
Despite the impression left by television crime shows, the rate of solved homicides across the country has been dropping, down from 79 percent in 1976. Authorities attribute the decline to an increased use of firearms, leaving little or no DNA evidence from the killer, and gang violence, which leaves few witnesses willing to come forward.
Behind closed doors, some families tell you they know who committed the crime. The suspects may even be living in their communities, making families of victims afraid to speak out, to talk to the press, and afraid even to reach out to neighbors.
They're afraid they're nagging police detectives too often. Or not enough.
Despite reassurances that investigators treat all homicides equally, families worry that either action might somehow make their loved one's case fall lower in the pile of the county's cold cases.
They are afraid the detectives on their case will disappear -- some retiring, some taken off the case, some rotated around the department.
In Tina's case, her family says they are on their third detective in less than seven months. Lety Peña said one sheriff's investigator, Steve Villegas, was taken off the case when he ran for Salinas City Council. Another retired early, the family said.
Then there are the everyday fears, the normal ones that go with sudden grief.
Tina's 6-year-old daughter, one of three children left behind, is simply afraid the other adults in her life will leave her. Lately she's been asking Tina's mother how long she will be around.
"What am I going to tell the kids when they grow up?" Sanjuanita Peña, 58, said as she watches her daughter's offspring run from the living room to the kitchen and back. She is caring for two of Tina's children, while another relative is raising the other. Sanjuanita and her husband are both disabled.
"Now to have two kids at our age? I always helped take care of them, but I never thought I'd have to take care of them because she wasn't going to be there."
Though they were optimistic at first, family members has grown frustrated over what they see as a lack of action from law enforcement.
"Normally, when anyone is missing, there they are, combing the neighborhoods," Sanjuanita says. "I was shocked that nothing happened in this case."
Calls to detectives were rarely returned, they say. "We found out where she died from her friends," Lety said, and her voice grows quieter as she adds that she learned Tina had been shot in the head from the newspapers.
Now a new detective is on the case and he returns their calls promptly, Nelly said.
The family is guarded but hopeful. Again.
And like scores of families around the county, they are facing the holidays with shattered hearts and few answers.
Lots of angels|
When a loved one is slain, social workers don't come knocking, police don't hand out phone numbers of support groups and city officials don't call to ask how you're coping.
You're left pretty much on your own to clean up the mess of lives left behind.
Fifty miles north of the Peña's apartment, Lydia Lerma's Salinas mobile home is full of angels -- there's an angel statue near the door, angels on her ceiling and angels on the bedspreads. She offers visitors an angel Christmas ornament when they drop by.
She's one of the newest members of A Time for Grieving, a support group for mothers who have lost children to violence. A collage documenting the life of her son, Sergio, leans against a living room wall, near a tiny statuette of Sergio, complete with a tiny sweatshirt and blue jeans. Sergio Dominguez was a left-handed pitcher with a reputation for no-hitters in the Atlantic Little League.
"They'd ask who was pitching," she says. "And they'd be like, 'Sergio? Forget it.'"
Lerma, 52, said she taught her children right from wrong. She has always respected the police and the job they have to do.
"To be a cop here in Salinas, that takes a lot of guts," she says.
Sergio seemed to be heeding her messages.
"He didn't wear red or blue, he was more of a loner," Lerma said. "He was rarely out there in the street."
And so she didn't think much of it when she saw the headlines one October morning last year.
"I saw 'Salinas' 7th murder' on the newspaper."
But Sergio's girlfriend called, saying something about someone doing CPR on a guy who looked like Sergio.
Lerma said she went to the police station and told them her son didn't come home last night. "I hear these rumors and I want to know."
Just then, her youngest daughter walked into the station. The police had called and asked her to "bring Mom in," Lerma said. "I knew that was it."
A year after Sergio was shot by someone firing from a passing car, Lydia felt like she was going crazy. She and her family had frequent dreams about Sergio, dreams that left her heart racing.
"My granddaughter... was in a field and Uncle Sergio came to her and they were walking. He stared at her and said... 'I want you to tell Mom that I love her and I miss her. But tell her I'm OK, I'm with her all the time. I'm in the air, in the stars, I'm everywhere, so don't cry.'"
But she does cry. Even as she says the words, she cries.
Not the only one|
When Lerma discovered A Time for Grieving, she was gently surprised to learn she wasn't the only parent who thought she was losing her sanity.
"We have so many similarities," she says. "Our dreams are the same."
Deborah Aguilar, 46, one of the organization's founders, calls herself "a survivor of life's most traumatic event." It's not an honor she'd wish on anyone.
A year after her 18-year-old son Stephen was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2002, Aguilar wasn't finding the help she needed in other grief groups. At one, she said, people even laughed at her when she spoke.
So she stayed alone with her feelings.
"I saw him a lot, I smelled him, all that stuff I was going through," she said. Then she remembered another mother who had lost a son. She called her.
"I said, 'You don't know me, but what I'm going through, is this real?' I needed to know. She said, 'It's real what you're feeling.' She was hurting, but she was helping me.
"We were just two moms crying to each other on the phone." On Oct. 14, 2003, the group had its first meeting at Sunrise House in Salinas.
Sipping coffee in her kitchen, Aguilar said her heart is stronger this year. Her religious faith, she says, keeps her going, making her want to keep helping others like her.
Deborah's husband, Oscar Aguilar, 48, has brought home a new PlayStation for his youngest boy's Christmas present. Now he's putting together his daughter's new bike.
"A lot of people don't know the depth of it," he said. "You have no one to blame, so you start blaming yourself. I've never had a straight head since that day. Every day that goes by, you're just thinking 'This guy's out here laughing and we're the ones paying the price.'"
He stands up his handiwork and admires: the bike has a purple hand brake. A burst of mylar streamers cascades from the handlebars.
Stephen's killer has never been caught. Oscar aches to see an arrest and conviction, but it's not about getting revenge -- it's about getting answers.
"I just want to know why," he says. "That's what eats me up like a cancer."
Kristen Thoeni was a friend of Stephen's and she, too, has questions.
"I wish I knew where these people get that frame of mind," the 23-year-old says. "They tore up that person's whole world and walked away."
She's been involved with the mothers' group since its inception. The parents, she says, "are the victims more than anyone, because they have to deal with the aftermath."
Thoeni, a working single mom, does her best to take care of the mothers, sending flowers and cards on birthdays and anniversaries.
A graduate of Everett Alvarez High School in Salinas, she's lost a dozen friends, mostly to violence.
"One of the hardest things for the moms is having that gang-related shooting on their child's name," Thoeni said. "It can mean the person who did it was involved in gangs. To lose your kid, and then get the gang-related label. On top of that, the guilt that's thrown on them."
Praying for the attacker|
Like several of the mothers, Gloria Flores, 52, said she has prayed for whoever shot her 18-year-old son, Lucas.
"I prayed for that person, that God will forgive him," she says. "I don't try to make sense of it."
Lucas Flores liked marbles. Then skateboarding. And then girls liked him.
Gloria and her son talked about it all, and when she worried about him too much, he would say "You're stressing, Mom."
"Then his hormones calmed down," his mother says. "He was going to buy a car that weekend. His girlfriend had the prom tickets already bought. They were going to get married."
One spring night last year, two police officers showed up on Gloria's doorstep. "I thought, what did he do? Get a ticket?
"I was told he's been shot in the head and he's been airlifted to Stanford," she says. "My daughter was screaming. I should have been the one screaming. I know it was shock."
She's telling the story in her living room, where a small Christmas tree brightens a corner below photos of a smiling young man. It's Lucas.
During the long vigil at Lucas' hospital bed, she says, some women came "from the organ donors. I said yes. I didn't think twice about it. He would have said, 'Take as much as you can.'"
Lucas died on April 3, 2005. "To this day, whenever I hear a helicopter I think of him." She looks up, toward the heavens.
She looks down, at her hands. "Why didn't I take more pictures?"
This year, Gloria proudly attended a ceremony for families of organ donors.
"His heart went to an 18-year-old," she said. "His kidney went to a dad of three children." She holds a book, like a high school yearbook, of the donors' name and photos. She finds his page. "It's a year now and their health is good."
It is the first time she smiles, and she is crying at the same time.
"I have to think about those people who survived because of him. That young man -- who knows, he may make an impact. Those kids need their dad."
Lucas Flores was the fifth homicide victim in Salinas last year.
"I want people to know there's a real person, a face behind that number. There is a family that gets left with that pain."
On Tuesday, several dozen mothers, fathers and friends who understand that fact lit candles and marched in chilly darkness to Salinas City Hall.
The next evening saw a drive-by shooting at Towt Street and Laurel Drive, where a 23-year-old woman survived a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
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