A jury’s decision Friday to convict Raul Gomez-Garcia of killing a Denver Police officer and wounding another is a just end to a senseless and horrible crime.
The 21-year-old restaurant worker said on the witness stand that he was enraged after the officers, who were off-duty and working security, ejected him from a baptismal party where he was a guest. He went back armed with a gun, intent on revenge.
The week-long trial elicited detailed testimony of how the situation escalated and offers an opportunity to take away some sad lessons. Mostly though, the cascade of events leaves you heartsick for the family of Officer Donald Young.
Witnesses told jurors that Officer Young and Detective Jack Bishop stopped Gomez-Garcia from re-entering a party at the Salon Ocampo social hall on May 8, 2005. Gomez-Garcia and Young reportedly argued for several minutes. At one point, Young grabbed Gomez-Garcia by the arm and throat and pushed him up against a railing.
Gomez-Garcia was humiliated by the confrontation.
Young must have realized that on some level, because he told his fellow officer that he was sorry for having grabbed Gomez-Garcia by the neck.
After his ejection, Gomez-Garcia went to a pool hall and talked about going back and shooting the officers. He testified that his companions egged him on. “They kept making fun of me, and asking, ‘What are you going to do?’ So they convinced me … to go back and shoot at the police officers,” he said, as if others were responsible for his outrageous and irrational actions.
Gomez-Garcia testified that he didn’t mean to kill the officers. He said he thought they’d be saved by bullet-proof vests. That’s implausible. For one thing, one of the three shots he fired at Young struck the officer in the head. For another, a non-lethal result would have exposed Gomez-Garcia to return fire.
The tenor of the confrontation between Young and Gomez-Garcia had all the earmarks of tragedy. For the sake of the Young family and Detective Bishop, you pray in such circumstances that cooler heads will prevail.
The people who call themselves friends of Gomez-Garcia ought to be ashamed of themselves if they stoked the anger of a humiliated man they knew had a weapon. It shows shocking disregard for human life.
The jury handed Gomez-Garcia just punishment under unusual circumstances, as if they were proceeding with one hand tied behind their back. Gomez-Garcia fled to Mexico after the shooting and was extradited only after prosecutors pledged that they wouldn’t seek the death penalty or life in prison without parole. That satisfied Mexican law.
Now Gomez-Garcia will be sentenced to many decades in prison, an appropriate place for a killer who can’t control his rage and who inflicted such pain to his victims and the community.
