Deadly ends to 2 cases of domestic violence
Police, family advocates seek answers to incidents days apart
Susana Robles Desgarennes spent the last weeks of her young life at her happiest, singing and dancing every morning, her friends said. The 20year-old mother had finally gathered the courage to leave her controlling boyfriend and embrace her future, they said.
But on Sept. 30, that future was cut short when police said her ex-boyfriend, 24-year-old Angel Raygoza, fatally shot her before shooting himself. Police officers found their bodies in a car in the Dolores Heights neighborhood.
Robles Desgarennes’ death marked the second time in a week that domestic violence ignited danger and trauma in San Francisco. On Sept. 24, an armed man was killed by police officers after a standoff in the Russian Hill neighborhood in which he held his girlfriend and their two children hostage in their home, officials said.
In both cases, the men were said to have a history of abuse, and police and domestic violence advocates are again looking at what, if anything, could have been done to intervene earlier. The advocates say the episodes underscore a need for strong gun control, though it’s not yet clear how the men obtained the firearms they used. The cases are under investigation.
“Even though we have great laws in California, that doesn’t stop people from getting guns from other places,” said Minouche Kandel, women’s policy director for the city’s Department on the Status of Women. “Having stronger national gun laws would certainly reduce firearms getting in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, including domestic violence perpetrators.”
In the first incident, police responding to a home on Salmon Street at 11:35 p.m. found that Damian Murray, 46, was armed and not allowing his girlfriend and their two children to leave a bedroom, investigators said.
During the ensuing standoff, Murray allegedly fired a handgun at least three times, striking a nearby home with one shot. Crisis negotiators had been working with Murray for three hours when they heard what they
thought to be the third shot. Believing the situation had escalated, commanders sent in tactical team officers, who shot and killed Murray, officials said.
“Though the police ended up killing him, he was a danger to his family because he had this gun,” said Beverly Upton, executive director of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium. “Most of our domestic violence homicides didn’t used to be gunrelated. But now they’re lethal.”
At a town hall meeting Tuesday organized by police, Cmdr. Greg McEachern said Murray had a lengthy history of domestic violence with his girlfriend, who had obtained a restraining order against him.
A restraining order would have barred Murray from possessing a gun, requiring him to turn in any weapons, Kandel said. In San Francisco, that can mean police confiscating an alleged abuser’s weapons, said Officer Robert Rueca, a police spokesman.
“It’s a process we would do right away if there is a domestic violence investigation,” Rueca said. “If a person is arrested, we would take any kind of weapon out of the home.”
The problem, Rueca said, is that police aren’t always involved. While some civil restraining orders require offenders to turn in firearms, police aren’t notified if an injunction had been filed against a gun owner. And if the alleged abuser happens to own unregistered guns, little can be done unless the victim makes a point of stating the offender has access to firearms.
Complicating matters, some victims may be afraid to report illegal gun possession by abusers, who often make sure their victims feel dependent on them even if they are apart, either through finances or children.
Kandel said her office is working with law enforcement agencies to develop a better system to confiscate guns from abusers, which Rueca said is a good thing.
“We’ve got to figure it out,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out how to make it safer for the public, especially for the victims.”
Robles Desgarennes, the young mother killed in Dolores Heights, had not obtained a restraining order against Raygoza, though she was afraid of him, said Marlene Sanchez, a family friend.
“She came to my house and told me she was scared,” Sanchez said. “She said she wanted to stay with me because he didn’t know where I lived. He knew where her sister lived and she knew he would be watching her.”
Robles Desgarennes came to the U.S. from Mexico 10 years ago. With little family nearby, she quickly fell in love with Raygoza and became pregnant, Sanchez said. She moved in with his family, and he began controlling her life.
“She was suffering silently,” Sanchez said. “I think now, people are looking back, remembering the signs, remembering that time she had a bruise on her face. But she didn’t have any family, and she had her daughter. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
But Robles Desgarennes “always kept a happy face on,” Sanchez said, and worked at Sephora, the beauty products retailer, to support her daughter. Determined to succeed, she graduated high school and went on to City College, where she was taking marketing classes and working to launch her own makeup line.
The day she was killed, Sanchez said, Raygoza dropped the couple’s daughter off with Robles Desgarennes’ sister, and was acting “really normal and really nice.” He offered his ex-girlfriend a ride to class, and that was the last time anyone saw her alive.
Sanchez is helping Robles Desgarennes’ sister fight for custody of her niece, which she believes her friend would have wanted. Though they only had each other and their brother for family support, the sisters had become part of a community of other young mothers, as well as people they met through activism for social justice, Sanchez said.
That community is now raising money to set up a trust for her daughter, so she can seek an education like her mother.
Though heartbroken over her friend’s death, Sanchez said she takes solace in knowing that, in the weeks before she was killed, Robles Desgarennes was at her happiest.
“I had never seen her like that,” Sanchez said. “Those last weeks of Susana’s life, she was free. She was free from his control.”