Violence and the Social Compact

Authorities said Beatriz Cintora-Silva called 911 shortly after 4 a.m. to report shots fired. The 911 dispatcher heard her cry, "No, no, no," followed by a gunshot. Sanchez took the phone, told the dispatcher he had killed three people and that he was going to kill himself, authorities said. The dispatcher then heard a single shot followed by silence. 

Cook said Sanchez had been arrested Saturday in Longmont on charges of domestic violence, kidnapping and false arrest for allegedly holding Maria Cintora-Silva against her will after their relationship ended. Sanchez was released on bail from the Boulder County jail at 10 p.m. Monday and drove to the home where Cintora-Silva had taken refuge with her sister and brother-in-law, Cook said. "He shot out the back door," Cook said. "He shot that out then gained entry into the house." 

The bodies of Ojeda and his wife were found in one bedroom. His sister-in-law and Sanchez were found in another, Cook said. Authorities found a .45-caliber Glock handgun near Sanchez's body and 16 spent shell casings around the house, Cook said, adding that investigators were still examining the house and might find more. 

Cook said Sanchez had two magazines for the gun, and each held 13 rounds of ammunition. Sanchez had been living in another house in the same neighborhood of tidy modular homes, winding walkways and parks. 

Investigators searching that home found the original box the handgun had been sold in, but they did not find a receipt, and it was unclear when he bought it, Cook said.

My ex-husband tried to kill me after months of working himself up to it. The day of the event he was at my house, and spent a good half hour following me around, badgering me about things, working himself up into a frenzy about nothing, until he totally lost it and started beating the crap out of me. 

The only thing that stopped him from grabbing a knife and finishing the job was that someone walked in on him. Amazingly then the first thing he said was 'oh my god what have I done, please don't have me arrested'. In retrospect I see it as a long brewing, calculated step into madness, then an attempt afterwards to blame me for it. 15 years later he still takes no responsibility.

To think that a person who is consciously capable of that kind of act, or a person so lacking in relationship skills that he can't manage to get out of a situation without killing the other person is going to possess the skills to know when it's time to give up his gun is not realistic. These guys are deep in the depths of denial.

After our first date, my future wife's stalker, a truly pathological man she had briefly dated months earlier, revealed himself by physically attacking her in a grocery store parking lot. This started a three month reign of terror, which included an attempt to choke her to death in the unattached garage where the laundry room was. He was finally jailed after beating another woman he was stalking at the same time into a coma. The harassment didn't stop until I beat the sh*t out of a friend of his he had stalking her further, when he tried to break into her house while I was dog-sitting. 

There are truly ill people in this world. I'm sure my wife's stalker is out of jail now. I contemplate what I shall do should he ever appear again. I am ashamed to say that my guilt over not being able to protect her -- a bullshit male response if there ever was one -- were it not for the fact that we now have children, might well result in his death should he approach her again. It remains the only time in my life I have coldly reasoned how much violence I wish to mete out, and how I could get away with it.

Someone I dated briefly in high school showed up at my house one night shortly after I stopped going out with him drunk and with a pistol, threatening to shoot me. A mutual friend was also there and restrained him. I never even told my parents, who were upstairs asleep at the time, let alone called the police. He verbally terrorized me for months afterward, making life in my small high school pretty ugly for awhile. 

I marvel now, more than 35 years later, that I was so accepting of the idea of my own powerlessness in the situation that it never occurred to me to defend myself or to prosecute the guy in any way. Nor did it occur to any of my classmates who knew about the incident to discuss it with any authority figure. Profoundly fncked.

My ex-wife's second husband during the dissolution of their marriage shot a rifle in her vicinity inside their house, in a room where my second daughter and granddaughter by my first daughter, no more than an infant at the time, were also. He was not a hunter; I had never known him to shoot or discuss self defense. He was not a collector. This was Texas, where guns and rifles in the home are as common as cups and saucers. 

For a month afterwords, my daughter stayed in the same bed as her mother (I did not find out till all this was over or I would have been very upset) to protect her. He was never arrested, albeit there was a restraining order put on him to stay away from my ex-wife, though not my daughter or granddaughter, after a hearing in which my daughter, who had had an excellent relationship with him for years, had to testify to assure the petition's success. She told me later it was, up to that point, the most terrible day of her life, and I believe it was the event that triggered her bi-polar condition in ensuing years. The rifle was legal and registered. 

He has denied the incident ever occurred for over a decade, so convincingly so that one must infer that his memory has erased the event and replaced it with an entirely different narrative he has supplied for himself and repeated to himself. He has never once since demonstrated any violent behavior toward anyone, let alone gun use. If he had hit either my granddaughter or daughter it would have been an accident, a slip or trip, perhaps a ricochet: he was not, according to my daughter, aiming in their direction.