Monday, May 18, 2009

"My daddy ate my eyes out" yet suspect remembered as loving, doting father


I have long lost any sense of shock at the horrors some people are capable of, but then a story comes along that simply leaves you speechless. The latest Bakersfield savagery to unfold locally involved a drug crazed father who - brace yourself here - literally ate the eyes out of his son and left him blind in one and perhaps both eyes. The victim in this case was 4-year-old "baby" Mendoza, who according to neighbors had been living with his father (Angelo Mendoza Sr.) even though he told his mother he was afraid of his father. Check out all the chilling details on KERO-TV's website available here. The unanswered questions surrounding this tragedy are endless, including:
* Why was the boy living with the father when, according to KERO, his father had a substance abuse issue and was confined to a wheelchair?
* Where was the mother?
* Why did the mother leave the boy after he expressed such fear of his father?
And of course there are the inevitable interviews with neighbors and the father's brother who are simply shocked this could happen because the father just loved his son so much. Unfortunately these are the kinds of stories coming out of Bakersfield that folks remember.
Photo courtesy of KERO-TV website.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The most unimaginably sick thing..ever.
Would anyone care why he did it?....this animal needs to be put down.

Anonymous said...

This is a tragedy. I do not mean to underplay the dreadfulness of this crime against an innocent child. Still, I am reluctant to tar Bakersfield with this brush, any more than I would say the Georgia father who fed his children poisoned soup to extort money from Campbell's or the mother in New Mexico who smothered her son and buried him in playground sand are the result of living in their particular states or towns or that the towns bear a stigma as a result of the crime happening there. Evil exists everywhere.