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I thought this piece from the New York Times on the Web presents an interesting mix of military service, the war in Iraq and perhaps gang violence.
Author: Dean E. Murray.
Date: January 14, 2005
Publication: New York Times on the Net
Available: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/pop/articles/14marine.html, January 14, 2005.
Kin of Marine Who Shot Policemen Ask if He Is a Casualty of War
By Dean E. Murray
CERES, Calif., Jan. 13 - A surveillance camera captured the gun battle in this small central California farm town in terrifying detail.
A marine on weekend leave from Camp Pendleton on Sunday night instructed a clerk in George's Liquor Store to call the police. When patrol cars arrived, the marine pulled an assault rifle from beneath his poncho and began firing. Both Sgt. Howard Stevenson and Officer Sam Ryno were hit.
"He walked over to where Sergeant Stevenson laid suffering from several gunshot wounds and shot him in the back of the head," said Lt. Bill Heyne, the lead investigator on the case for the Stanislaus County sheriff. "It was an execution of that officer."
The marine, Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, 19, who spent seven months in Iraq last year as a motor transportation operator, then walked to a muddy alley around the corner, a place where he used to pick oranges as a student on his way to Ceres High School. He slipped from one backyard to the next, telling some residents they were "innocent civilians" and would not be harmed.
Before the evening ended, as police officers from across the region responded to the shootings, more than 200 rounds had been fired, both Sergeant Stevenson and Corporal Raya were dead, and "small town America," as the police and fire chief here (he has to do both jobs) called Ceres, was desperately debating whether the young marine had deliberately gotten himself killed to escape possible return to Iraq.
"It is going to take a great deal of work to sort out what happened," Lieutenant Heyne said.
Some here blame the violence on Corporal Raya's wartime experience, which friends and relatives say was so traumatic that he cried during his home leave at Christmas about having to report back to Camp Pendleton. They suggest Corporal Raya, whose wish throughout high school was to be a marine and then a Ceres firefighter, might have invited the confrontation with the intention of erasing forever the awful images in his head.
But others say they see a vicious criminal who authorities say had a past association with gangs. They see drugs or alcohol as the more likely spark of his deadly rage, and they question how he was able to get the outlawed assault rifle used in the shooting spree.
The sharply differing viewpoints have spiked tensions between the authorities and many Hispanic residents, some of whom have repeatedly tried to erect a shrine to Corporal Raya on a dirt patch in the alley where he died only to have it removed by the city. At one point, graffiti against the police was splattered on a garage and fence in the alley. On Wednesday night, the authorities blocked access to the alley with barricades.
At a meeting about the killings in the high school cafeteria on Tuesday night, some angry and tearful Hispanic residents accused the police of ignoring their grief. One woman, Hilda Mercado, said after the meeting that no matter the circumstances, she was proud that Corporal Raya "died like a true Mexican: He died standing on his feet." Others said there were rumors that Corporal Raya had been trying to surrender, but that the police killed him anyway, something the police dismiss as unfounded.
Law enforcement and other city officials are scheduled to meet with some Hispanic community leaders on Friday to try to breach the divide. The Rev. Dean McFalls, a priest and former police chaplain in Ceres, said that the tensions were not new, but that the Corporal Raya he knew several years ago would have disapproved of them.
"There is a general sentiment among some people against authority and against the police," said Father McFalls, who accompanied Corporal Raya's parents and a dozen other relatives to the police station on Tuesday where they prayed at a memorial to Sergeant Stevenson. "This young man in his earlier life would not have encouraged any of this anti-police rhetoric."
Corporal Raya grew up in The Camp, a neighborhood of subsidized housing near the high school where Mexican immigrants, including his father, found shelter for their families while working in the nearby fields. For many teenagers in The Camp, a job fighting in Iraq is considered a dream ticket to somewhere better, which has made ever more poignant the mystery about why one life from The Camp ended so badly.
"Somewhere along the line, somebody let this young man down, and what it did was just domino right back into our neighborhood," said Frankie Haney, who lives near the alley and saw some of the shooting. "I feel the government owes us answers."
An investigation is under way at Camp Pendleton. Art de Werk, the Ceres police chief, said military authorities were cooperating with the police. "They have asked themselves what might have happened that could have contributed to this man's state of mind," Chief de Werk said. Whatever they find out, he added, "may be a reason, but it is no excuse."
Corporal Raya's friends and family say they are also looking for answers, but they are deeply offended by the presumption among some in Ceres that the blame lies solely with him. In an interview Thursday, his father, Tomas Raya, said the family was especially saddened at the thought that he might not be given special military honors at his funeral on Friday. "It is very painful," said Mr. Raya, who works in a canning company. "He served his country. He loved his country as we do."
The police said they were investigating one notion that even if Corporal Raya had a death wish, his decision to engage in a gun battle with police officers in his hometown was an indication that he hoped to impress local gang members. Sergeant Stevenson, 39, an 18-year veteran and a father of three, is the first Ceres police officer to be killed in the line of duty. Officer Ryno, 50, a 22-year veteran, was listed in good condition on Thursday.
"He wanted to take as many cops with him as he could," Lieutenant Heyne said.
Lalo Madrigal, 19, a friend of Corporal Raya since they were small children, said the authorities were trying to smear his friend by raising the possibility of gang involvement. He said that Corporal Raya was not a gang member but a "proud Mexican" and that most young people in Ceres had friends in gangs.
"He shouldn't be known as a cop killer," he said. "No one is saying glorify what he did, but it should be understood. The best way to look at it was he was a casualty of war."
Though Corporal Raya had no adult criminal record, Mr. Madrigal said the marine had sparred with the police as recently as October when several officers stopped him near Ceres High School during a home leave, and Corporal Raya insisted the officers show him "more respect" now that he was a marine.
It was about the same time, friends and relatives said, that Corporal Raya began acting strangely. A cousin, Rebeca Raya, said he visited her in Texas in October and was unable even to order food in a restaurant without viewing the waiter fearfully. After they went to see the Michael Moore film "Fahrenheit 9/11," Ms. Raya said, her cousin told her: "That is only some of it. There are worse things to it."
Ms. Raya said she was so disturbed by his behavior that she called one of her sisters in California. "I said, 'He is just not right,' " Ms. Raya recalled. "I grew up with him. He wasn't the same person."
The police said Corporal Raya had several brushes with the law as a juvenile, but those records are sealed. Officials at the Marine recruitment station in neighboring Modesto, where Corporal Raya enlisted in July 2003, said that it had taken him about eight months to pass a qualifying exam but that a background check had raised no red flags.
Representative Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat who represents the area and who was briefed by the authorities before attending a candlelight vigil for Sergeant Stevenson on Wednesday night, said he was convinced that Corporal Raya was not "a poor soldier who has post-traumatic syndrome."
He said, "We have to be very careful in this case not to make this out to be something that it isn't."
On Thursday, family members gathered at the home of one of Corporal Raya's relatives in a subdivision that a few years ago was planted with strawberries. Final preparations were under way for the funeral. A poem the young man wrote in eighth grade with the refrain, "I am a person with fears and desires," was faxed to the funeral home.
"I pretend I can never die.
I feel my heart beating when I am scared.
I touch the clouds in my dreams.
I worry how will I die."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Children's Privacy Notice
Author: Dean E. Murray.
Date: January 14, 2005
Publication: New York Times on the Net
Available: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/pop/articles/14marine.html, January 14, 2005.
Kin of Marine Who Shot Policemen Ask if He Is a Casualty of War
By Dean E. Murray
CERES, Calif., Jan. 13 - A surveillance camera captured the gun battle in this small central California farm town in terrifying detail.
A marine on weekend leave from Camp Pendleton on Sunday night instructed a clerk in George's Liquor Store to call the police. When patrol cars arrived, the marine pulled an assault rifle from beneath his poncho and began firing. Both Sgt. Howard Stevenson and Officer Sam Ryno were hit.
"He walked over to where Sergeant Stevenson laid suffering from several gunshot wounds and shot him in the back of the head," said Lt. Bill Heyne, the lead investigator on the case for the Stanislaus County sheriff. "It was an execution of that officer."
The marine, Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, 19, who spent seven months in Iraq last year as a motor transportation operator, then walked to a muddy alley around the corner, a place where he used to pick oranges as a student on his way to Ceres High School. He slipped from one backyard to the next, telling some residents they were "innocent civilians" and would not be harmed.
Before the evening ended, as police officers from across the region responded to the shootings, more than 200 rounds had been fired, both Sergeant Stevenson and Corporal Raya were dead, and "small town America," as the police and fire chief here (he has to do both jobs) called Ceres, was desperately debating whether the young marine had deliberately gotten himself killed to escape possible return to Iraq.
"It is going to take a great deal of work to sort out what happened," Lieutenant Heyne said.
Some here blame the violence on Corporal Raya's wartime experience, which friends and relatives say was so traumatic that he cried during his home leave at Christmas about having to report back to Camp Pendleton. They suggest Corporal Raya, whose wish throughout high school was to be a marine and then a Ceres firefighter, might have invited the confrontation with the intention of erasing forever the awful images in his head.
But others say they see a vicious criminal who authorities say had a past association with gangs. They see drugs or alcohol as the more likely spark of his deadly rage, and they question how he was able to get the outlawed assault rifle used in the shooting spree.
The sharply differing viewpoints have spiked tensions between the authorities and many Hispanic residents, some of whom have repeatedly tried to erect a shrine to Corporal Raya on a dirt patch in the alley where he died only to have it removed by the city. At one point, graffiti against the police was splattered on a garage and fence in the alley. On Wednesday night, the authorities blocked access to the alley with barricades.
At a meeting about the killings in the high school cafeteria on Tuesday night, some angry and tearful Hispanic residents accused the police of ignoring their grief. One woman, Hilda Mercado, said after the meeting that no matter the circumstances, she was proud that Corporal Raya "died like a true Mexican: He died standing on his feet." Others said there were rumors that Corporal Raya had been trying to surrender, but that the police killed him anyway, something the police dismiss as unfounded.
Law enforcement and other city officials are scheduled to meet with some Hispanic community leaders on Friday to try to breach the divide. The Rev. Dean McFalls, a priest and former police chaplain in Ceres, said that the tensions were not new, but that the Corporal Raya he knew several years ago would have disapproved of them.
"There is a general sentiment among some people against authority and against the police," said Father McFalls, who accompanied Corporal Raya's parents and a dozen other relatives to the police station on Tuesday where they prayed at a memorial to Sergeant Stevenson. "This young man in his earlier life would not have encouraged any of this anti-police rhetoric."
Corporal Raya grew up in The Camp, a neighborhood of subsidized housing near the high school where Mexican immigrants, including his father, found shelter for their families while working in the nearby fields. For many teenagers in The Camp, a job fighting in Iraq is considered a dream ticket to somewhere better, which has made ever more poignant the mystery about why one life from The Camp ended so badly.
"Somewhere along the line, somebody let this young man down, and what it did was just domino right back into our neighborhood," said Frankie Haney, who lives near the alley and saw some of the shooting. "I feel the government owes us answers."
An investigation is under way at Camp Pendleton. Art de Werk, the Ceres police chief, said military authorities were cooperating with the police. "They have asked themselves what might have happened that could have contributed to this man's state of mind," Chief de Werk said. Whatever they find out, he added, "may be a reason, but it is no excuse."
Corporal Raya's friends and family say they are also looking for answers, but they are deeply offended by the presumption among some in Ceres that the blame lies solely with him. In an interview Thursday, his father, Tomas Raya, said the family was especially saddened at the thought that he might not be given special military honors at his funeral on Friday. "It is very painful," said Mr. Raya, who works in a canning company. "He served his country. He loved his country as we do."
The police said they were investigating one notion that even if Corporal Raya had a death wish, his decision to engage in a gun battle with police officers in his hometown was an indication that he hoped to impress local gang members. Sergeant Stevenson, 39, an 18-year veteran and a father of three, is the first Ceres police officer to be killed in the line of duty. Officer Ryno, 50, a 22-year veteran, was listed in good condition on Thursday.
"He wanted to take as many cops with him as he could," Lieutenant Heyne said.
Lalo Madrigal, 19, a friend of Corporal Raya since they were small children, said the authorities were trying to smear his friend by raising the possibility of gang involvement. He said that Corporal Raya was not a gang member but a "proud Mexican" and that most young people in Ceres had friends in gangs.
"He shouldn't be known as a cop killer," he said. "No one is saying glorify what he did, but it should be understood. The best way to look at it was he was a casualty of war."
Though Corporal Raya had no adult criminal record, Mr. Madrigal said the marine had sparred with the police as recently as October when several officers stopped him near Ceres High School during a home leave, and Corporal Raya insisted the officers show him "more respect" now that he was a marine.
It was about the same time, friends and relatives said, that Corporal Raya began acting strangely. A cousin, Rebeca Raya, said he visited her in Texas in October and was unable even to order food in a restaurant without viewing the waiter fearfully. After they went to see the Michael Moore film "Fahrenheit 9/11," Ms. Raya said, her cousin told her: "That is only some of it. There are worse things to it."
Ms. Raya said she was so disturbed by his behavior that she called one of her sisters in California. "I said, 'He is just not right,' " Ms. Raya recalled. "I grew up with him. He wasn't the same person."
The police said Corporal Raya had several brushes with the law as a juvenile, but those records are sealed. Officials at the Marine recruitment station in neighboring Modesto, where Corporal Raya enlisted in July 2003, said that it had taken him about eight months to pass a qualifying exam but that a background check had raised no red flags.
Representative Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat who represents the area and who was briefed by the authorities before attending a candlelight vigil for Sergeant Stevenson on Wednesday night, said he was convinced that Corporal Raya was not "a poor soldier who has post-traumatic syndrome."
He said, "We have to be very careful in this case not to make this out to be something that it isn't."
On Thursday, family members gathered at the home of one of Corporal Raya's relatives in a subdivision that a few years ago was planted with strawberries. Final preparations were under way for the funeral. A poem the young man wrote in eighth grade with the refrain, "I am a person with fears and desires," was faxed to the funeral home.
"I pretend I can never die.
I feel my heart beating when I am scared.
I touch the clouds in my dreams.
I worry how will I die."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Children's Privacy Notice
