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.
I see others have kind of filled in the blank spots I left in my reply.
I'll rephrase your question into my own words: "Are you saying he should be shot dead simply because he's in my house, uninvited, in the middle of the night, and apparently in a drug induced haze?" YES!!! We'll figure out the rest after the funeral.
The homeowner doesn't have an obligation to kill him, but as a general rule he would be doing society a favor by pulling the trigger. If I had the money, I would establish some sort of award for those howmowners who kill intruders, thereby making the rest of us safer.
Here's a prediction to remember: within ten years, new technology will show that common viruses and other pathogens have a major role in causing brain lesions that trigger behavioral and character problems, including criminality. When that happens, there will be a radical rethinking of criminal law and sentencing -- but we will still have to lock up criminals and use force against them because, even if their conduct is seen as a disease, we still have to protect ourselves against them. Sympathy and moral condemnation of criminals is relevant to the political psychology of criminal justice but irrelevant to policy choices and personal defense decisions.
Thanks =-)
Nope, wrong. He was not proposing anyone should be executed. He was proposing that people who commit the violent crime of breaking into a house uninvited should not be given the benefit of the doubt. They should be assumed to be dangerous, armed or not and if they refuse to comply with a request to halt and/or surrender to the home owner then the home owner has the right to kill them if he feels his life is in danger.
If you break into someone's home you are NOT non violent but very violent indeed and if you end up dead you have no one but yourself to blame.
"I dont even want to get into what they do on their breasts and other private parts."
Oh please do! :-)
"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?"
Of course, now everyone knows you are defenseless. What is your address, again? I imagine it can be found on the police report.
What do you mean "not involved in any violent crime?".
The perp just violently broke through the reporter's front door. Then he left a trail of HIV infected blood inside the house.
While his mother may be grateful that the homeowner did not shoot him, the homeowner has dodged his responsibilities to the rest of us...
Minor delay in the process.
The "How cruel you are..." was a bit tongue in cheek... Truthful, but tongue in cheek... Also, the poster is absolutely correct. If this guy is in YOUR home, coming up YOUR steps with the possible intent to harm YOUR family, then you have every reason to empty YOUR gun into him, call the police on YOUR phone and clean up afterwards with YOUR mop.... Then go to sleep in YOUR bed, nite nite....
With that scenario there is no "after the fact".... Not to bring up your tremendous longevity on this forum, but with a whole 1 DAY, you seem to want to get a rise out of the people here. If that is not your intent, my apologies for infering it... If it is, enjoy your short visit...
The punk is lucky. Many Texans would have put his lights out forever.
"Should I have waited a month after registering to post?"
Well, standard procedure is 6 months, but we'll let it go....... just kidding : ) I guess my point is, how do you know? How do you know that when standing there, eye to eye with this guy, he won't get violent? I agree with you that if someone who is NOW in prison on let's say, robbery is about to be released after serving their time... should they bbe xecuted? Of course not, but who the hell knows at that exact time, when this reporter is facing this intruder at the bottom of his stairs, that he won't be violent?
That's my point...
Ok: Just for you. How about having hot and cold tattooed over the nipple. Or maybe "Property of Jake tattooed over the vagina. How about rings thru the vulva and nipples, or thru the penis. Sex organs arent made for costume jewelry.
Remember "You asked for it"
I can't believe she wanted to do that to her child! (Actually I can, since so many parents seem intent on hurting their kids in all sorts of ways.)
Not to mention that if the homeowner only wounds the perp. he's guaranteed to be put through YEARS of lawsuits by the perp., now the "victim", because he was shot.
It's much easier if the cops only have one side of the story when they write up their report.
Two to the chest, one to the head. (And packing +P hollow points might be a good idea too.)
There's no "may" about it. He already became violent when he broke down the homeowner's door.
Rick Casey is a political writer(often of fiction) for the Houston Chronicle. Aka their Robert Fisk.
And don't expect such forgiveness from him if Tom DeLay sneezes, so forget about the "Thanks for not shooting my rep" letters.
His writing is neither clever nor insightful, even given allowances for his bleeding heart liberal focus on life. His only saving grace is that he isn't terribly abrasive.
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