Tragic Family Reunion After Border Slaying

It had been two years since Ana Maria Jimenez had set eyes on three of her children, including her 12-year-old son, Emilio. Her family, like so many other expatriate families from Mexico, has been divided by immigration status and economic necessity. All eagerly awaited a reunion scheduled for last week.

“Emilio was so anxious to be with his parents again,” Jimenez recalled Monday as she and relatives gathered at her family’s modest apartment here. “He said the important thing was that we were together as a family,” the mother said, remembering a recent telephone conversation with the boy.

The reunion was never to be. On Friday afternoon, Emilio Eusebio Jime nez Bejines--described as a conscientious youth who once collected bottles and old car batteries for resale in an effort to supplement his family’s meager income--was slain with a high-powered rifle as he and a group of other Mexican citizens gathered atop a border hillside in San Diego. He died from a single shot to the head.

He and several relatives were en route from Tijuana to San Diego, and, eventually, a new life in this Orange County community.

Among those who witnessed the killing were the boy’s brother, Ernesto, 13; his sister, Raquel, 11, and their uncle, Emilio Bejines Gomez, 22, who was entrusted with bringing the three from their home in the Mexican state of Jalisco to Southern California.

On Friday night, San Diego police arrested Leonard P. Cuen, 21, a resident of Monument Road, one of the first streets north of the border. Cuen, who remains in custody, is believed to have fired the fatal shot from his home 350 yards away, according to police.

Cuen was not seen by family members but was spotted with a rifle by other migrants that afternoon, according to a verbal account that the dead boy’s uncle says was provided by San Diego police.

Dave Cohen, a police spokesman, declined to comment on a possible motive in the shooting, but speculation about the incident has been considerable.

Groups of illegal aliens headed north frequently pass through the grounds of Cuen’s parents’ home, and one theory put forth by some of his neighbors is that Cuen may have grown tired of the constant intrusions.

There have also been reports that Cuen may have been target shooting, a theory the uncle said was relayed to him by police investigators.

For the Jimenez family, sorting out the motive behind Emilio’s death seems less important now than coming to accept the painful reality that their long-awaited reunion had ended in tragedy. On Monday, Ana Maria Jimenez viewed her son at a Westminster mortuary, the first time she had seen him in two years.

“I had to embrace his body,” said a sobbing Jimenez, a deeply religious woman who has picked strawberries and cleaned offices, among other jobs, to support her family since she came to the United States in the early 1980s.

“He appeared peaceful; he appeared to be sleeping,” she said. “I heard my son speaking to me. I asked him to forgive me for not being with him during this time. I promised him I would care for his brothers and sisters.”

Her family is one of many split by immigration laws and poverty. U.S. and Mexican authorities report an increase in women and children crossing the border in recent years. Many of the recipients of amnesty under the 1986 immigration law revisions were men whose families were left behind.

Emilio’s mother is undocumented in the United States, as are three of her four surviving children. (Her youngest, Ana Carol, 5, was born in the United States, she said.) Her husband, Ernesto Jimenez, 34, who is recuperating from several work-related accidents, has achieved temporary legal status through the amnesty program, family members said.

Emilio and his siblings lived in the United States for four years before being sent back two years ago when the family was no longer able to support them here, the mother said. Since then, the children have been living with relatives in Mexico, while she and her husband sent home money for their care.

“I’ve done my best to make a home in this little apartment,” said the mother, one of nine children of a vendor of teguino, a regional drink made of corn. “My idea was always that my family would arrive, would go to school here, and we would be together. . . . I never worried about clothes or other things for me. What counted always were my children.”

On Sunday night, the family prayed together while burning a candle to the Santo Nino de Atocha, a revered Roman Catholic child figure in Mexico. The boy’s uncle, Emilio Bejines Gomez, is struggling with feelings of guilt because his sister’s three children were entrusted to his care.

“I was as careful as I could have been with them,” he said, fighting back tears in the ground-floor family apartment that is part of a development where many new Latino immigrants reside.

He recalled how he purchased seats in the middle rows of the bus that took them from Guadalajara to Tijuana, believing that they would have a better chance of surviving an accident that way. He said he watched out for the children during the five hours or so they spent in Tijuana on Friday before hooking up with a smuggler and heading to the paths that lead to San Diego.

After the shooting, he said, he carried the boy frantically on his shoulder for about 150 yards, seeking help, before feeling the warm liquid on his clothing and realizing that it was blood. He looked at the boy’s eyes and saw that they were “lost,” he said, then showed a visitor the blood-stained clothing he wore that evening.

Shortly before the shooting, the uncle said, he had experienced a premonition that something bad would happen on the trip. He said he considered going back to Mexico, but realized that he couldn’t do that, that it was important that his nephews and niece make it to their parents’ home.

“I prayed to God to ask that if something happened, let it happen to me,” he said.

“It’s something that I can never forget. I can’t forget that spot on that hill.”

All family members voiced the hope that such a thing will not happen again.

“I just wish,” said Teresa Jimenez, a sister-in-law of the dead boy’s mother, “I just wish that the United States and Mexico would get together and just open their eyes to what’s going on, and make it easier for families that have been separated for so many years to get together.”

Ana Maria Jimenez showed little rancor, expressing only the wish that no other mother will have to go through what she has experienced. “No one should have to live with this,” she said, sunglasses hiding her tears.

She showed a visitor a letter written in a neat hand three weeks ago by Emilio, who she said was a strong student. In simple prose, he spoke proudly of his good marks in school and noted that he had recently received his primary school diploma, which he planned to present to his mother personally.

“I love you all a lot,” he wrote, “and I’ll never forget you.”