Manuel Ornelas, known since childhood to his family as Whacko, was 26 when he died. He was behind the wheel of his uncle’s rental car. His uncle was sitting next to him. A drunk friend was in the back.
They’d been at a bar and were leaving the Taco Bell drive-through just south of the intersection of Federal Boulevard and Alameda Avenue when someone — it could have been Manuel — shouted the name of a local gang.
The response was gunfire.
At least two bullets struck Manuel, one in the back of the head, one in the back of the neck. His car rolled across the parking lot into a store wall.
Look, Manuel’s father, Johnny Orne las, says, you can still see the crash marks. We park and walk around the parking lot, trying to picture the chain of events of Dec. 27 at 1:55 a.m.
He looks west toward Federal, and I follow his gaze to the traffic not 100 yards away. He turns and spits. I know what he’s going to say. I know because I heard it from the mother crying at her kitchen table, her son’s ashes in an urn on the fireplace mantel. I know because I heard it from a mother who carries her dead son’s framed photo with her.
“Someone had to have seen something,” Johnny Ornelas says. “Someone knows something. We just want to know what happened. My son was a human being too.”
The family wants justice. What entails justice is a matter of definition in this neighborhood. It is safe to conclude the uncle, one of Johnny Orne las’ brothers and an ex-con, did not start the investigation off well by telling police: This is street law. I’m not gonna help you.
“When my brother told me he said that, I told him: ‘There’s been too much killing. Let the authorities handle it,’ ” Johnny Ornelas says. “We made a brother promise: If he found out something, he’d tell me.”
But the street has its own rules. It exacts its own demands, operates by its own logic. This is the other Denver, the one we are content to believe does not affect our own, a place we condemn without understanding, thus perpetuating its survival.
As I sit in Johnny Ornelas’ living room, not far from the corner where his son was killed, there is the sense that something already has been set into motion.
His brother Rudy says: “We don’t want vengeance. We just want to know what happened. But street justice is street justice. We’re from here. 80219; it’s nothing nice. Nothing nice.”
I sit on the couch, and Johnny Orne las serves me some of his homemade potato salad, and his other brother Ernest says, “He rearranged all the furniture to cover every single window.”
Johnny says he did it about a month ago. In case someone decides to do a drive-by.
The uncle who was with Manuel the night he was killed told the family he was text-messaging when he heard the shout and the shots. He ducked, he said, and didn’t see anything. The family is inclined to believe him. Ernest says he calls crying every night.
They’re angry. They say the police are out to get the uncle and are dismissive of them, a sprawling clan of Chicanos, some of them upstanding citizens, some of them gangsters.
Manuel liked to say he was a gang member, but he wasn’t, they say. He has a daughter and a baby on the way, and every family member describes him the same way: He had a big heart, and he didn’t deserve to die. More than 500 people attended his funeral.
I don’t get to question the investigating detective. Sonny Jackson, a police spokesman, says it doesn’t matter whether Manuel was a good guy or a bad guy. He was shot down, and the family deserves justice.
To say the family brought some of this pain upon themselves is both true and beside the point. They do not bear the cost of this violence alone.
Manuel has an older brother named Johnny Jr. He’s a big guy like Manuel was. He doesn’t say much during my visit, just drinks his Pepsi. Manuel’s little sister Julia whispers: “He’s been like that ever since it happened. He’s just so quiet.”
He gets drunk almost every night. He confronted a couple of neighborhood gangsters. They swore they had nothing to do with it.
“And if you find out who did it, are you afraid you’re going to do something yourself?” I ask him.
He nods without looking at me.
“I’m the dad,” his father tells him. “That’s not what I want. You have a job. You have a kid. I’ve made it clear. I want the law to handle this.”
I look at Johnny Jr., a heartbroken man who tells me later he wants a better life. I cross a line.
“I don’t live in your neighborhood,” I say. “I don’t know its rules, but this killing has to stop. You’re only 30 years old. Don’t throw your life away.”
His eyes tear up. He takes another swig of Pepsi.
His father says: “I get paid Friday, and I’m gonna buy me a gun. For self- defense. I have to protect my family. I don’t want to, but that’s reality.”
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
