Activists denounce man's clearing in shootings
July 1, 2008 —
HOUSTON — A grand jury's decision to clear a suburban Houston homeowner for shooting to death two men he saw burglarizing his neighbor's home is not the end of the polarizing case, the fiancee of one of the two men said Tuesday.
"This is not over. It's not over by a longshot," said Stephanie Storey, the fiancee of Hernando Riascos Torres.
Storey said she was pondering her legal options, including filing a civil lawsuit.
Torres, 38, along with Diego Ortiz, 30, were fatally shot by Joe Horn, a retired grandfather, after he saw them crawling out the windows of a neighbor's house in the Houston suburb of Pasadena, carrying bags of the neighbor's possessions.
Horn's attorney has said his client shot the two men in November out of fear for his life when they came into his yard and threatened him.
But Storey, while not condoning what her fiancee and the other man did, called the shootings "premeditated murder" because Horn should have waited for police to handle the situation.
Horn, 62, called 911 and but ignored the dispatcher's repeated requests to stay inside, saying he was "gonna kill 'em." Horn confronted the men with a 12-gauge shotgun and shot both in the back.
Autopsy reports released Tuesday show the two men were shot in the back, arms and shoulders
Torres' cause of death was listed as coming from a shotgun wound of the torso and the area around the upper left arm and shoulder, while Ortiz's death came from a shotgun wound to the neck and torso.
"I'm very surprised that these two lives had no value, that someone can take the law into their own hands and shoot them down like animals and absolutely get away with it. I'm more than angry right now," Storey said.
Community activists, who denounced the grand jury's decision on Monday, said they planned to stage a demonstration outside the Harris County District Attorney's office next week.
Community activist Quannel X accused the district attorney's office and the justice system in Harris County of being racist and broken and needing to be fixed.
Torres and Ortiz were unemployed illegal immigrants from Colombia. Horn is white. Torres had been deported to Colombia in 1999 after a 1994 cocaine-related conviction.
"I believe that the racist mind-set that was there when Chuck Rosenthal was leading that office is still in existence in that office today," Quannel X said. "I believe that mind-set would allow a grand jury to be impaneled that is the racial makeup of really one race."
Quannel X said he suspected most of the grand jurors were white and called on the new district attorney, Kenneth Magidson, to release details about the racial makeup of the grand jury that cleared Horn.
Rosenthal, the former district attorney, resigned in February under the weight of a scandal involving the release of dozens of controversial e-mails, including racist ones, found on his office computer.
The city's black activists began to publicly question whether race played a role in several incidents in Rosenthal's career.
His assistant district attorneys were accused of finding creative ways to strike blacks from juries and using racist code words to discuss black jurors.
Donna Hawkins, Magidson's spokeswoman, said a court order issued by the judge who handled the grand jury prevents the release of their names or any other information about the panel.
Grand jury proceedings are secret and normally no information about panel members is made public, she said.
Hawkins also denied Quannel X's claims that race played any role in the grand jury's decision.
"I can absolutely assure you that racial bias did not color the proceedings in this case," she said. "We make every effort to present the law and evidence to the grand jury and it's their decision. Our victims are many colors. Our defendants are many colors. Our oath is to see that justice is done."
Magidson does not intend to present the case to another grand jury, which Quannel X requested on Tuesday.
"A fair assessment of the evidence was done by the grand jury," Hawkins said.
Quannel X said he also planned to lobby legislators to change the law that condoned Horn's actions.
Texas law allows people to use deadly force to protect themselves if it is reasonable to believe they are in mortal danger. In limited circumstances, people also can use deadly force to protect their neighbor's property.
