The record shall reflect that Casey is just a Great Big Softie (group hug!).
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.
Happy Mother's Day Rick Casey. </sarcasm>
Thanks for not posting this. ;)
Thanks for not shooting him? How cruel you are to the rest of us.
The record shall reflect that Casey is just a Great Big Softie (group hug!).
Sounds like the author had a religious experience or something.
Mom's blonde, so it's OK.
Another triumph of the penal system.
Isn't senility fun?
This fool, Casey, puts himself and his whole family in danger by living in a high crime area without adequate protection. He doesn't have adequate protection from a break in and has no method for defending his home after a break in. He was extremely lucky that the intruder wasn't armed or more agressive. Then he writes a couple of self praising articles about how wonderful he is. What a useless jerk.
So he'll be "cured" again, then go rob, beat up and/or kill somebody else? The guy is a waste of oxygen and so is this author.
We can only hope that they meet again.
Whatever the result, we'll all be better off.
--Travis--
Of course had the incident led to the brutal rape and murder of members of his family, would he have been so receptive about having spared the druggie's life. Shoot first and ask questions later, you'll live longer.
If he is so stupid as to not protect his family,
his line deserves to die out.
Evolution in action.
--Travis--
HE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A GUN!!
As I turned at the landing I saw him at the bottom of the stairs. He was not a large man, a skinny 5-foot-7 or so. He was wearing slacks and a T-shirt, but what I noticed first were the tattoos covering his arms.
He didn't appear armed. I decided to act out of my anger, not out of my fear.
"Who are you and what are you doing in here?" I yelled. Then I called to my wife: "Kristen! Get the gun and call the police!"
I was grateful she didn't yell back: "What gun?"
And this guy might want to get tested for HIV now...
He smelled strongly of alcohol and was bleeding from a variety of cuts. I was able to herd him down the stairs and across the living room to a door leading out to a garden. I pushed him out and locked the door.
Joey is a blight on society. Heads up Joey, I wouldn't give you a break.
Perhaps this "article" is a response to Florida's new self-defense law: "See, you don't need to shoot armed invading criminals. Just hold hands with them and sing kumbaya..."
I was grateful she didn't yell back:
D'OH!!!
I read that a little to fast.
Still, he didn't have a gun.
Happy Mother's Day, mutha.
What sense does the mother have? How many more lives will her son ruin?
Some people don't need to die to go to hell. They're already living there. God help them.
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