Officer-involved shooting leaves Delhi man’s widow with questions

A photo posted on social media started the fight. He accused her of cheating and she tried to tell him he was wrong. She told him they should live separately and he began to beat her. When their frightened 16-year-old daughter said she was calling the police, Araceli Garcia said, “Yeah, OK.”

Five days after the fight, the 33-year-old Delhi woman points to drops of blood on the walkway outside her front door and votive candles burn where her husband, Juan Manuel Torres Barajas, fell down dead.

“I do wish we had never called the police,” Garcia says, “because I would still have him.”

The shooting last week of 38-year-old Torres has left Garcia asking why the domestic fight escalated to its violent end, leaving her without her husband and their seven children without their father.

Advocates for survivors of domestic violence say Garcia’s regret for having summoned officers comes from the same concern that often keeps people from seeking help from law enforcement.

“They’re fearful that their loved ones might get in trouble,” said Chee Yang, program director for the nonprofit Valley Crisis Center in Merced. “These are still individuals they love. They are in crisis, but they still love them.”

Torres died late Thursday afternoon after Merced County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to a call from the couple’s 12-year-old son. Deputies Alejandro “Alex” Barba and Adam Leuchner encountered Torres at the door of the home brandishing an AR-15 assault rifle. Authorities say Torres started shooting, wounding Barba before Leuchner returned fire, killing him.

Garcia said her husband suffered from bipolar disorder and was not acting reasonably when the argument started. When deputies arrived, she said, she warned them there were guns in the house but she did not expect her husband would come out shooting. It all happened so fast, there was no time for any communication between the deputies and her husband, she said. Two of her children were standing less than 15 feet away when the gunfire erupted.

“We thought we were living like in an action movie,” Garcia said Tuesday. “I wish they would’ve taken other options instead of just killing him.”

Sheriff says deputies had no options

Sheriff Vern Warnke said there was no chance for any other action.

“He comes out with a machine gun and she thinks we could’ve done something less than lethal?” Warnke asked. “He came out with an assault rifle and cranking rounds off at my deputies. This isn’t television. We don’t have a gun that shoots out a net.”

Garcia, Warnke said, “has had a lot of trauma in her life and this guy created it. I think when she gets past this and is thinking clearly, she’ll understand why the actions we took were absolutely necessary.”

A smattering of bullet holes are punched into the stucco walls from the shots aimed at Torres. Deep bullet holes mark the interior of the living room, furnished with barely more than a few patio chairs. Seeing his mother pointing to the marks, the couple’s 5-year-old son ran to the kitchen and noted a gash that one bullet left inside the family’s refrigerator.

Garcia’s older children have been following social media posts about the shooting, even though she tells them to stop. Her 9-year-old daughter sleeps with her father’s shirt. Her youngest, she says, wants to know when his father will come home.

Torres worked for Garcia Farms, she said, and was the sole provider for their family. He had a criminal record that included past domestic violence, she said. He refused to take medication for his mental disorder but lately, she said, he had been calm. It had been years since they had a serious fight, she said.

During the argument late Thursday afternoon, she suggested they break up and he began to beat her, she said.

Leaving abuser not so simple for domestic violence victims

On average, Yang said, a person living with domestic violence will leave their partner seven times before she or he finally decides to get out of the relationship.

“One of the barriers we do find is financial instability,” she said. “They depend on their partner to provide their home, their food, their money.”

Valley Crisis Center helps its clients – the majority of whom are women – to find financial support, as well as counseling for themselves and their children. It also provides emergency shelter and will soon open two units of transitional housing for families trying to move to safety.

More than 600 phone calls were made to the center’s emergency hotline, 209-722-4357, in the fiscal year that ended in June, Yang said, and more than 1,200 bed-nights were provided to domestic violence survivors.

The numbers, she said, point to an even bigger problem: 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men will experience physical violence by their partner. But many will avoid reporting the violence to law enforcement.

Not only do they worry about their partners being arrested, if officers do manage to de-escalate a situation, the victim might face repercussions.

“The perpetrator might harm her more,” Yang said. “It’s a double-edged sword. Do I call, or do I not call?”

Many people are unable to see that they are in an abusive situation. “If an individual is not sure, they can always call and we can assess the situation and offer them support,” Yang said.

The crisis center works with the Sheriff’s Office to help domestic violence victims, providing support to the abused partner as well as children who, Warnke said, “a lot of times are the unmentioned victims in these cases.”

Many victims are in a cycle of abuse they don’t know how to escape, Warnke said: “They get so used to it, they almost don’t see they’re being abused.”

Garcia said she is trying to figure out how she will raise money to pay for her husband’s burial and how she’ll be able to provide for her children.

“How am I going to do it?” she asked. “I was left behind with nothing. Nothing at all.”

This story was originally published September 13, 2016 at 6:47 PM with the headline "Officer-involved shooting leaves Delhi man’s widow with questions."