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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Tears of Rage: Adela Perez broke down in court Monday as she told Saul Martinez and Gregorio Martinez about the pain they brought into her family's life.
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Adela Perez finds some resolution as her son's killers are sentenced Judge Tito Gonzales gives Martinez and Martinez 13 years for beating death
By Cecily Barnes
Adela Perez sits on the bench outside Courtroom 49 in the Hall of Justice, clutching four pages of notes. The papers have been bent and wrinkled. Every few moments Perez nervously shuffles them some more, flipping a page and grabbing onto a new section of the paper. When not fidgeting, she lays the notes in her lap and folds her hands over them.
Today is a day of reckoning for Adela Perez. She will address the men who beat her 14-year-old son Oscar to death less than one year ago--the men she also holds responsible for the death of another son, David. She will then watch them receive their prison sentences.
The chance to address Oscar's killers is nothing compared to her loss, but it is all Perez has, and so she clings to it as momentous. She hopes her son's killers will hear her. She hopes they will be sorry. She hopes that somehow, speaking to her son's killers will help ease her pain.
When the courtroom doors open, Perez grabs her notes and walks in, surrounded by a large group of family members and friends--all wearing white T-shirts. Half read, "In Loving Memory of Oscar Perez Jr."; the other half are dedicated to David.
Gregorio Perez Martinez, 19, and Saul Hernandez Martinez, 21, do not look up when Adela Perez and her family enter the courtroom. The killers do not look up when the judge admonishes them, and they do not look up when Adela speaks to them directly, wetting her T-shirt with a mother's tears.
Fourteen-year-old Oscar Perez Jr., who awed people with his dancing and could make everyone laugh, met his fate on June 13 while walking to Jack-in-the-Box with his girlfriend, Maggie. That afternoon, a Toyota Celica cruised through the Willow Glen area; in that car were Martinez, Martinez and four other youths. When those in the car spotted Perez, they halted the vehicle and chased the boy down Settle Avenue. They caught him and then proceeded to kick, punch and stab him to death, believing he was a member of a rival gang. At the preliminary hearing on Jan. 11, Lucilla Partida, a friend of the attackers who sat in the car during the incident, recalled Perez crying out, "Help me."
One month after the murder, Oscar's younger brother, David, hanged himself out of grief.
The two girls who allegedly took part in the killing have been charged in juvenile court. A third man, Martin Martinez, is still at large--a witness has testified that he wielded the fatal knife. Although Saul Martinez and Gregorio Martinez--who are unrelated--were charged with murder, District Attorney Scott Tsui agreed to a manslaughter charge.
Seated in the courtroom this morning with their heads hung low, neither man shows any emotion, even after Judge Nazario "Tito" Gonzales sentences them to 13 years in prison.
Adela Perez springs to her feet when the judge beckons her, the papers crunched in the grip of her right fist. She stands strong, staring straight at her son's killers. As she launches into her speech, her voice falters and does not return to normal for the next five minutes. The words rise and fall through a musical range of despair, warbled with tears, yet somehow lucid.
Clad in their T-shirts, the two rows of family members curl into themselves, sobbing, swaying, grabbing onto one another. Adela's speech is the last official opportunity she and the family will have to grieve, to be acknowledged for their loss.
"Me, Oscar's mother, [I] will never forgive you for the pain you brought to my life," she says. "I can't sleep at night; I can't think. I'm not the same anymore. I'll never be the same again...all because of you! You killed my son, and because of that you killed the other one too."
Adela takes a quick breath, stopping just long enough to breathe back her tears.
"All I have left is my memories. I remember how I used to sing to him. This big kid," she sobs again, "used to sit in my lap and I used to sing to him."
"Their 3-year-old little brother still asks for him at night. He used to sleep with Junior. He tells me, 'Call him, Mom; call him on his pager, I want to talk to him.' And I don't have an answer for him."
Martinez and Martinez do not look up. Although they listen through a Spanish interpreter, they can undoubtedly hear the sound of Adela's voice. Her anguish seeps past not only the headphones and language barrier, but through the stolid workings of the court. The bailiff, the judge, the attorneys and reporters just stare.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
