DISTRICT ATTORNEY HONORS SEVEN CITIZENS OF COURAGE

San Diego County selects awardees for their acts of bravery

Isabel Rosales’ husband knew exactly how long it took her to get to the nearest grocery store and knew it took 22 minutes for her to get home after work. If she was even a minute late, he would call, exerting a control over her that finally erupted in violence one day in January 2018.

Early that morning, Rosales and her husband argued about her texting her coworkers, and he told her she couldn’t go to work that day. Rosales went to the bathroom, where she heard him unsheathe a kitchen knife. He came to the bathroom and asked for a kiss.

“And then that’s when he stabbed me the first time,” Rosales said.

Her husband stabbed her in the throat a second time in front of her three children, ages 9, 11 and 12, before she was able to run outside and seek help from neighbors.

The bravery Rosales has

shown in the aftermath of the attack, which resulted in a judge sentencing her husband to 23 years in prison, prompted the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office to name her one of the county’s 2021 Citizens of Courage.

“When you have a case like this, you are expecting to meet a victim at their most broken,” Deputy District Attorney Abigail Dillon said in a video about Rosales. “Instead the person I met was just so, so incredibly strong.”

Dillon said Rosales has since become very involved in the Family Justice Center and wants to help other domestic violence survivors.

“I can’t think of a better example of a citizen of courage than Isabel,” she said.

Victim advocate Taraneh Sarebanha said, “It was incredible to see her journey from the beginning ... to now, where she has basically become a champion for women who are ... in the same predicament as her. And (she) has helped her children move past what happened in order to better their lives.”

Former District Attorney Edwin Miller started the District Attorney’s Citizens of Courage program in 1990. It typically is held yearly during National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, but because of the pandemic, last year’s program was canceled and Wednesday’s was presented virtually via Zoom.

Here are the others honored Wednesday:

Sherveen and Warshan Ali

The Iraqi-born twins came to the United States when they were 4 years old with their mother, who had worked as a translator for the U.S. military during Operation Desert Storm. Their father also came to the U.S. along with other members of the extended family, but he soon returned to Iraq. He visited several times per year.

In 2018, the family agreed the twins, then in their teens, could visit their father in Turkey. While there, he crossed them into Iraq, tried to cut them off from their mother and held them captive.

“He beat us ... and a lot of torture was involved,” Sherveen said. “It was very violent.”

In October 2019, after nearly 500 days as their father’s prisoners, the twins were finally reunited with their mother with help from district attorney’s office.

“I really hope that in time, Warshan and Sherveen realize what happened to them in Iraq is truly tragic, but how they survived it and how they handled it is truly heroic,” District Attorney Investigator Christopher Everett said.

Kevin Eslinger

During a 2018 confrontation at Sunset Cliffs, a stand-up paddle surfer used his paddle to club Eslinger in the head. The attack left the 58-year-old Point Loma resident and longtime high school and youth swimming coach with a brain injury that at times impeded his speech and other functions.

Deputy District Attorney Matthew Greco called Eslinger a “very active witness and participant in the prosecution” of Paul Taylor Konen, 36, who is serving a fiveyear state prison term.

“Mr. Eslinger had to overcome the effects of this assault in order to obtain justice,” Greco said. “And his willingness to ... confront his attacker, and to do it with dignity and humility, really stands out.”

Emma H.

The teen faced death threats and ridicule from her peers in 2018 after reporting that a classmate had threatened to shoot up their high school.

“I wanted to stay anonymous, but that didn’t work out,” she said, explaining that one of the friends she texted about making the report shared her secret. “This kid found out it was me. He came back a couple days later and started to confront me about it with another person. They threatened again to come to school with a gun, and they told me they were going to kill me, kill my friends, kill my family.”

Deputy District Attorney Hung Bach said that despite the threats and ridicule, Emma bravely saw the case through, even testifying in court.

LaMar Johnson

The former Valencia Park resident awoke around 3 a.m. one day in 2016 and went outside to smoke a cigarette. That’s when he heard a commotion and went to check on “blood-curdling screams” in a new neighbor’s home. A woman was begging a man to “please stop.” Johnson called 911, prompting a police response that ended in an arrest, and then he sat with and comforted his neighbor.

Two San Diego Superior Court trials for the man arrested that night, Navy Cmdr. John Michael Neuhart II, ended in mistrial before prosecutors dropped the case. Neuhart eventually pleaded guilty in a Navy court-martial case to charges of assault and behavior unbecoming of an officer and was sentenced to a year in San Diego’s Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar.

“People say that I was a hero for what I did,” Johnson said. “I’m not really a hero, I’m just the guy next door that was looking out for his neighbor.”

Alicia Villegas

While posting missing-person flyers for Omar Medina, her brother, Villegas discovered his car a few blocks away from the house he’d recently been kicked out of. Having already reported Medina missing, she asked Chula Vista police to conduct a welfare check at his prior residence.

The officer’s body-worn camera footage from that welfare check later provided key evidence for the second-degree murder conviction of Medina’s former roommate, 56year-old Timothy John Cook. Prosecutors said Medina was stabbed 66 times before his body was stuffed into a 55-gallon barrel and dropped into the San Diego Bay. Cook was sentenced to 56 years to life in prison.

“From the day (Medina) went missing, (Villegas) was relentless,” Deputy District Attorney Cherie Somerville said. “She contacted the police, she put out missing-persons flyers; she really loved her brother a lot, and she was going to make sure he wasn’t forgotten.”