As Uriel Terrero gazed upon his little brother’s still form, he became convinced that 4-year-old Angel Terrero-Gonzalez was not yet at peace.
A hit-and-run driver had taken the preschooler’s life a short time before, and in death, Angel’s eyes would not remain closed.
So the 18-year-old Terrero asked his grieving parents to leave the hospital room and talked to his youngest brother, the one he used to teasingly call, “gordo,” or plump.
“I asked him to forgive me,” the Montbello High School senior recalled Monday, twisting one of Angel’s small white socks in his hands, “and I promised him that I would change my strong attitude. I told him I’d look out for our parents, and for our brother and sister, if he’d just close his eyes. Then I put my hand back on his face, and he did.”
Now Angel’s family, friends and neighbors are left with the pain of missing him and with the unrelenting despair of one unanswered question.
“Why?” 39-year-old Pascual Terrero, Angel’s father, wailed Monday from the family’s home, only a few yards from where Angel was struck at 3 p.m. Sunday by a black Ford Explorer with an emblem of a heart on the back that fled the scene. “Why didn’t he stop to help my son?”
On Monday, Denver police said they were searching for the Explorer and the three men who were in it when it struck the boy in the parking lot of The Villages at Gateway apartments, 12175 E. Albrook Drive.
Angel’s mother, 39-year-old Maria Gonzalez, was loading clothes into her car with Angel to take to the Laundromat when she stepped back to close and lock their apartment’s front door, Uriel Terrero said. In that moment, Angel darted into the parking lot and was struck.
He was taken by ambulance to Medical Center of Aurora South, where he died.
Residents at the complex said the driver of the Explorer, described as a Hispanic male wearing a cowboy hat and a black shirt, left the car to look at the boy before getting back in and quickly driving away.
Despite her loss, Gonzalez said she couldn’t summon any hatred or anger toward the man. “God bless him,” Gonzalez said in Spanish through her tears Monday. To a questioning reporter, her oldest son explained, “She doesn’t want anything bad for him. If she tells him she hates him, the bad will only come back to her.”
As friends surrounded the family’s 7-year-old son and 2-year- old daughter, Angel’s father said he had a message for the man. “I want to tell him, what if somebody did what he did to his son or daughter?”
His family described Angel, who loved swimming, arcades, toy cars and Spiderman, as a loving boy who showered them daily with numerous kisses. “His name said everything,” Gonzalez said.
Now, Uriel Terrero said, “we don’t know what to do. We keep thinking he’ll come home.”
The family runs Misty Carpet Cleaning, named for the couple’s daughter, said Terrero, who worries about his parents’ tears and wonders whether he will ever feel like returning to school.
On Monday afternoon, neighbors circulated cardboard boxes wrapped in a flier that said, “Please help the family of Angel. … We all would like to lay him to rest in a manner fitting an innocent child.”
Terrero, who will graduate from high school in December, said his brother’s death has fueled his plans to attend college and then law school.
“I want to use justice to help people,” he said.
As for the driver who took Angel’s life, Terrero said, “He’ll get his.”
Contributions for Angel’s funeral expenses can be sent to P.O. Box 110543, Aurora, CO 80042.
Staff writer Amy Herdy can be reached at 303-820-1752 or aherdy@denverpost.com.
