Homicide Victims’ Friends, Families Hold Own Vigil

More than 30 friends and relatives of victims of homicides gathered in an Oceanside restaurant Tuesday for their annual candlelight vigil, an occasion that eerily coincided with California’s first execution in 25 years.

“There’s a lot of rage in this room,” said Rod Hamilton, whose mother was killed three years ago by a reckless driver, as he and three others shared their stories of personal tragedy.

Hamilton is part of two North County support groups for friends and family of homicide victims that held the event to remember the victims of violent crimes.

“People forget about the murders once it’s out of the papers, but it doesn’t go away for us,” said Susan Fisher, whose brother, Ronald Ruse Jr., was gunned down by an ex-girlfriend in 1987 by the so-called “Fatal Attraction” killer, Linda Ricchio.

“The grief is still there, and the absence is still there, and the people who get the attention are the criminals. People are real interested about reading about murderers and seeing them on talk shows, and we are turning them into celebrities,” Fisher said.

A large majority of the attendees applauded the execution of Robert Alton Harris on Tuesday.

“California is a wimpish state, particularly when it comes to law enforcement,” said Hamilton, who predicted that, if more executions do not occur soon, citizens will lose faith in the criminal justice system. “A hundred years ago, we had our justice . . . in the Old West, everything was a lot easier.”

Sandy Smith waited up all night for the Harris execution.

“When they strapped him in . . . I cried, but not for Harris, but for me and all the people like me,” said Smith, whose 24-year-old daughter, Eydie Lopez, was stabbed to death by Mark Lugo in 1987.

Lugo was sentenced to 26 years to life imprisonment, a sentence too lenient for Smith. “March, in the year 2005, Mark, that bastard, comes up for parole,” she said, “and I will have to fight all over again to keep him in jail, and every year after that.”

Sheriff Jim Roache, the speaker at the vigil, said that, although “he did not relish the idea of anyone losing their life, even Robert Alton Harris . . . capital punishment is, in fact, self-defense. Society as a whole has a right to defend itself against predators.”