Angelo's Eyes

**WARNING** This is a terrible story with a bad ending.

I have a point to all the bad stuff that will be made in a later essay, but for now all I have to offer you is sad story that might ruin your day.  I will lighten it up on the next one.

In April of 2009 I was working as a two-man unit assigned to the patrol division in East Bakersfield.  My partner and I were dispatched to an unknown situation at an apartment on Ohio Drive.  We arrived about 30 seconds after the first unit and when we entered the apartment I noted it felt especially cold as if someone had been running the air conditioner all night and all day.  It was a one-bedroom apartment with tile flooring that is typical of an East Bakersfield home.  We went through the living room/kitchen and into the single bedroom.  That’s where we found him. 

Angelo Mendoza Jr. was a four-year son of a former gang member and now PCP user named Angelo Mendoza Sr.  Little Angelo was naked and sitting with his bare bottom on the tile floor.  He was shivering and bleeding from both hands and both of his eyes were swollen shut.  He had blood coming from both eyes and running down his cheeks.  One of the officers asked him what happened and he said, “My daddy bit me on my eyes and hands.”  The scene was too much for me to handle and my heart filled with rage.  I stepped out of the apartment to where some of the neighbors who had called the police were standing.  I saw a young Hispanic kid who was about 16 standing there with a look of shock and horror on his face.  I asked him who else lived in the apartment and he was able to tell me the boy’s father.  I tried to get more information about the father such as his name and a physical description, but he was too overwhelmed with what he had seen to be able to tell me anything other than the direction he saw the father leave and that the father was in a wheelchair.  From where we were standing I could see tracks in the dirt leading westbound onto East Terrace Way.  I figured a guy in a wheelchair could not have gotten far so I followed the tracks.

The dirt tracks ended at the street but from there I saw what looked like drag marks in the street made of mud and blood.  I continued westbound following the tracks across South Bliss Street and then west on East Terrace Way for about three or four houses until the tracks turned north across the front yard of a vacant residence.  Near the front flower bed I found a wheelchair that had been toppled over and from there additional drag marks went around the side of the house into the backyard.  In the backyard I found who I was looking for.  Angelo Mendoza Sr. had been the victim of a stabbing years earlier, like many other gang members, which had left him paralyzed below the waist.  He was laying on his back with his hands extended over his head.  He was holding a chain around his wrists and the other end of the chain was laid over the trunk of a nearby tree.  The chain was not locked or secured to his wrists or the tree and when I picked it up it came free of both.  Angelo Sr. was naked from the waist down and was wearing white socks which were soaked in blood.  I could see a deep cut on one of his ankles and a more superficial cut on the other ankle.  About 15 feet away was an axe with a bright yellow handle which was splattered with blood.  Angelo Sr. said to me, “It wasn’t me! The Mexican Mafia did it!”

In that moment it became clear what had happened.  Phencyclidine (PCP) is a dissociative anesthetic which was originally developed for medical use and was later banned for its negative side effects.  It is now a street drug which comes and goes as its popularity rises and falls with different trends.  Users experience an intoxication that produces numbness, slurred speech, and unsteady gait which can sometimes be mistaken for alcohol intoxication.  Due to poor quality control, as with most street drugs, PCP users often have negative side effects which include paranoia, hallucinations, agitation, and psychosis.  They often have an increase in physical strength and an elevated pain threshold which makes them difficult to manage when they are resisting arrest.  They also have an elevated body temperature which causes them to undress and seek a cooler climate-hence the cold apartment. 

Angelo Sr. had attacked his son in some drug infused stupor.  He permanently disfigured and handicapped the child because of a rage filled hallucination, and when he came out of it and realized what he had done he decided to cover his crime.  Angelo Sr. didn’t feel remorse for his actions or pity for his son which would have caused him to call for help, he felt fear for being held to answer for his crime and the need for self-preservation.  He dragged himself into a vacant yard where he thought no one would see him and then used an axe to injure the legs which had already lost all function and sensation.  Angelo Sr. then tried to make it look like he had been chained to the tree by someone else.  He blamed the Mexican Mafia for his crime despite the fact that they have an explicit rule against harming children.  Also, if La Eme really wanted to hurt a paralyzed dropout, they would cut him in a place he could feel.  The whole thing was absurd and just made me even more angry.  As the rage continued to build, I felt the urge to kill this person who had maimed that poor boy.  I looked around and saw the neighbors to the north and the west were all standing in their backyards looking on at the spectacle.  Before I could even consider the idea, it became obvious there would be no way to justify using any force on an unarmed, naked, and paralyzed man.  I got on my radio and advised the location and condition of the suspect and then waited for the ambulance and detectives to arrive.

Angelo Mendoza Sr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a mental health facility.  I’m not sure how he was deemed too insane to stand trial if he had the wherewithal to concoct an elaborate cover story and then take many difficult steps to carry it out.  God bless California.  His defense attorney said he would probably spend the rest of his life “in some sort of mental health facility.”  As of 2020 Angelo Mendoza Sr. was out of custody and back on the streets.  Angelo Mendoza Jr. recovered vision in his right eye but was permanently blinded in his left.  He was sent to live with a relative and I don’t know how his life turned out.  I still think about him all the time and really hope he was able to find peace and happiness.