Posted on 05/08/2005 5:48:09 AM PDT by rw4site
May 7, 2005, 11:18PM
After hearing from Rambo wannabes that I should have blown away the tattooed, drug-addled man who crashed into my house at 11 o'clock one night in February, the e-mail from Syble Asaf was arresting.
It's not every day a mother thanks you for not shooting her son.
"I was reading an article Wednesday evening and realized it is my son you were writing about," she wrote. "I am very sorry for what he did to your family. As equally I am grateful you did not shoot him."
Police records mistakenly listed him as José Calzada, a name that led some readers to jump to conclusions.
I hope they deport him, wrote one.
I had, after wrestling him out of my house, no desire to meet Calzada. I'm not Pope John Paul II, who befriended his would-be assassin.
But I couldn't resist the urge to meet his mother, the author of the warm and intriguing e-mail.
His name is Joe, not José, Mrs. Asaf told me.
Not only are both his parents native-born citizens, but Calzada, 26, grew up in the pleasant suburbs of The Woodlands and Spring and went to the good schools of Klein Independent School District.
"We're middle-class white American people trying to make it in the world," said Mrs. Asaf.
Joe's dad, who had a problem with the bottle, according to her, left when Joey was 1 year old. A couple of years later, she married her current husband, who is retired after years of owning and running an Exxon station.
Joey was, said his mother, a straight-A student through fifth grade. He played Little League and was in the Boy Scouts.
Then, with puberty, came anger and rebellion. At 11, he started disappearing for a week at a time. By 13, his parents padlocked their bedroom door to keep him from stealing for drugs. His stepfather sold his hunting shotguns.
At 14, he shaved his scalp and joined a white-supremacist skinhead group.
"He was always small, and believed he had to be seen as tough and scary to make up for it," Mrs. Asaf said.
When one of the bigger skinheads came to her house looking for red suspenders (a gang symbol) he had loaned Joey, Mrs. Asaf retrieved the suspenders, and told the skinhead her son didn't belong in their gang.
"I told him Joey's part Hispanic," she said. "Joey got angry. They wouldn't let him in after that."
"They'd keep him for 30 days until the insurance ran out and then say he was cured," she said. "It was a revolving door."
But Asaf lays little blame. She describes his teachers and some of his psychiatric professionals as being wonderful.
She worries that she herself didn't do enough, but she doesn't know what she could have done differently.
Then she pushes across the table a copy of the Houston Chronicle's defunct Texas Magazine.
In a "small world" thunderclap, there's the guy who broke into my house, on the magazine cover with his wife, Jennifer. The story, published five years ago, is headlined: "After drifting in a haze of drugs, violence and homelessness on Houston's streets, Joe and Jennifer may have found A Way Out."
And romance so mindlessly desperate that Jennifer knew Joey was HIV-positive, and had unprotected sex with him in hopes both of becoming pregnant and contracting HIV herself so she could die and be with him.
He had been HIV-positive since he was 16. His mom found out by being the one who gave him the test.
Jennifer left him while he was in prison in 2003. Afterwards he hooked up with and impregnated a woman. A middle-aged couple adopted the baby boy.
Miraculously, neither of the two women nor the baby became HIV-positive.
He calls his mother and sister occasionally. A talented artist, he's making money sketching tattoos (including those that cover his body) under the sponsorship of some friends in the Fifth Ward.
"Joey has a guardian angel," said his mother.
Still, she believes the only way he will survive, if not be happy, is in prison.
You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com.
You should be so useless. :-)
I've followed his writing on subjects Texan since the seventies. He has a genuine sense and skill for capturing and portraying his subject's life and character. He can in 700 words explain some of the most incredibly complex and convoluted issues we have in Texas, recasting them in simple, comprehensible images of real life and real politics. He is absolutely the best thing to hit the printed page since Damon Runyon.
I just wish his politics were bit more to the right. Ok, a lot more to the right.
Then Keagle [the prosecutor] asked what I would like to see happen.
"Does he have any priors?" I asked.
"I'm not supposed to tell you," he said. "But you're not going to run to the news."
Calzada, 26, had a felony drug conviction and a car theft, both a year and a half ago.
"Pretty much the same old same old that we see down here," Keagle said.
You are reading a story from someone that is going to win a darwin award in the next thirty days mark my words.Every cracked out pcp addict in the state that needs fenceable items for more drugs will find this guys house and pay him a visit.now that they know he is a p***y that wont do anything to protect himself or his family (wich is pretty much the first and only job of any real man) maby if one of his future druggie visiters kicks him in the ass hard enough a pair of testicles will move out of thier hiding place deep inside his vagina and take hold.But I doubt this tofu eating granola snorting coombaya singing nerd would do anything other then say thank you sir may I please have another.
ping
Mister Big Heart here should have the courage of his convictions.
He should post that statement on a sign in his front yard.
Trying to spread HIV is attempted murder.
1) The "man" made me do it.
2) Guns were the cause
3) Rascism
4) Conservatives caused it
5) The church is at fault
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by your post. Apparently, the young man has not been involved in any violent crime. Are you saying he should be shot dead simply because there are other offenders out there who are violent?
If this article is an example of Casey's comprehensible images of real life, both you and he have your head up your fourth point of contact.
This is him NOT being a bleeding heart?!?!?
I'm shocked no one has pointed out that this guy Casey is a MINDREADER!!
Casey:As I turned at the landing I saw him at the bottom of the stairs.
How did he know the guys intentions? Oh, because he told him.
As I started down the stairs toward him, Calzada said loudly, "Don't hurt me! I need help!"
I continued to tell him to get out, but he frantically tried to push by me to get upstairs.
"Yes, officer I told him I had a gun and to get the "F" out. He continued up the stairs towards me, I had no idea what he intentions were, that's when I fired."
Having said that, I have been in a position twice where I would have been legally justified in shooting a person trying to break into my house. Frankly I am glad I didn't either time.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't if the situation called for it. Both of mine involved liquor or drugs. One was I think simply at the wrong house and drunk. I simply let him go. The other was high on drugs and was trying to steal. I held him for a deputy.
I later talked to the deputy and the guy was on drugs and had got his car stuck in the ditch nearby and somehow ran his battery down. The deputy thought he was probably trying to steal a battery. I think they just let him go after a few days.
And the homeowner had this knowledge when the perp. was standing at the bottom of the stairs in a drug induced craze?
Wael, I suppose you've not advanced too far beyond seeing Spot run, then. :-)
I imagine among those who read without moving their lips, Casey and I do rather well.
Much thanks for sharing the insight.
hehe.... you said penal... : )
The poster (who I assume read the story) advocated killing the young man even though he knew he was unarmed and hadn't been charged with violent crimes in the past. I simply questioned this.
In Texas, a homeowner, or any resident of an abode has the right to kill any criminal intruder. The intruder does not have to be violent. Their mere presence in your home, uninvited, is grounds to kill. Why should anyone have to ask a criminal intruder what their intentions are?
Moldova allows you to own firearms for what?
"The night our house was invaded By RICK CASEY"
Your house was invaded by Rick Casey???
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