The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph courtesy of Adela Perez

'For Life': A grief-stricken David Perez (right) committed suicide a month after his brother, Oscar Jr. (left), was murdered in Willow Glen. The two brothers are shown here with their grandmother on Mother's Day in 1997.

Brother's murder, family's grief leads David Perez, 14, to suicide

Younger sibling was being treated for ADD

By Christine Frey

Searching through her son's belongings days after he hung himself at the residential facility where he was a patient, Adela Perez found only one clue as to why 14-year-old David took his own life--a crumpled paper that read, "Junior and David for life."

One month earlier, David's older brother, Oscar Perez Jr., was murdered in Willow Glen. David and Oscar were best friends; they wore the same clothes, ate the same foods and had the same friends. "Nothing was 'yours' or 'mine.' Everything was 'ours,' " Adela, 32, says, smiling. Now they share the same burial plot.

David Perez was close not only with Oscar but with the entire family. His mother called him the protector, who at times acted far older than his years: He defended his younger siblings from neighborhood bullies, prevented boys from flirting with his 12-year-old sister, Veronica, and told his mother not to reconcile with her estranged husband, fearing she would be hurt. However, David could not fend off his family's grief over Oscar's death.

For nearly a month after his brother's death, David tried to be the man of the house. His mother told him, "Babe, I need you with me. It's just you and me now. I'm gonna take care of you, and you're gonna take care of me." But as David lived at the Adolescent Residential Treatment Center, an in-patient facility for troubled youth, he could not be with his family as much as he liked.

He often called his mother in the middle of the night, asking her to take him home. Although he saw Adela Perez four to five times a week and was allowed visits home, it was never enough. On July 12, apparently overwhelmed by his brother's death and its affects on his family, he hung himself at the group home.

"It's in my mind: Why didn't he call me that night? If he called me so many other times, why didn't he call me that night?" Adela asks.

David had always been a serious and quiet child, Adela says. He would often hide his feelings to prevent her from worrying about him--another way he tried to protect her, Adela says.

While he struggled with learning problems in school, he had a unique ability to fix electronics. Adela tried to boost his self-esteem by reminding him of it. "If you were dumb, you wouldn't be able to do that," she would say after he had fixed the family's broken Nintendo or radio. Still, David often berated himself because of his poor grades at school.

At the time of his death, David was receiving treatment for his low self-esteem and for attention-deficit disorder at the ARC. He had been a residential patient there since June 10.

Adela didn't sense anything unusual from her son the last night she saw him alive. That day he had taken a leave of absence from the ARC and spent the afternoon at a birthday party for his great-grandfather, talking with family members and listening to Oscar's tapes on his Walkman. When Adela dropped him back at the facility that night, they said goodbye like they always did.

David was last checked on at 11 p.m. Saturday. He was found dead at 8:15 a.m. the next morning. Adela says the center's staff should have kept a closer eye on him that evening. "They knew better than to leave him alone," she says, wiping away tears.

David's siblings have also had difficulty dealing with their brothers' deaths. Two-year-old Joseph chants, "I miss my brothers," when he hears their funeral songs on the radio, and Veronica writes poetry about their deaths. "She doesn't believe love is happy any more. She believes love is sad," Adela says, adding that she is keeping close watch on her daughter, the oldest of her four living children. "I lost two, I don't want to lose any more."

Adela says she blames herself for David's death and wonders if she could have prevented it. "There's a lot of 'maybes' and 'I should haves' and 'I shouldn't haves,' " she says.

David had just turned 14 on June 30. He was buried in the birthday clothes he never got to wear. His shirt bore a pin of an angel sitting on the letter "J." David had worn the pin--a memento of his brother--since he received it for his birthday.

His older brother never got to celebrate his own birthday. Oscar died June 13, the day before his 15th birthday. Three suspects are in custody for his murder, and police are currently searching for a fourth. Adela says they are also responsible for David's death. "When they took Oscar, they took David with him. So I'm really hoping there's justice out there," she says holding the heart-shaped locket she wears that contains pictures of her two deceased sons.

But until justice is done, Adela has found some consolation knowing that her two sons are in heaven protecting each other. "I just close my eyes and I see them together, and it brings a smile to my face."

Adela is grateful for the community donations she received, which helped pay for the funerals of her two sons. Anyone interested in contributing to David's memorial fund can send donations to Washington Mutual Bank, 1285 Lincoln Ave., San Jose, 95125, account no. 1774197545. Checks can be made out to Adela Perez, FBO David Perez.

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