Teen-Age Couple Did Not Commit Suicide, Police Say

The death of a teen-age couple killed by a commuter train in Sylmar was accidental, not a double suicide, police said Tuesday. That satisfied mourning relatives but met with skepticism from young friends who said suicide fitted the couple’s unhappy lives.

Authorities had been investigating the possibility that Flora Carpio, 15, and her boyfriend, Marc Charles Ballin, 16, intentionally killed themselves Friday by walking along the tracks in the train’s path. Witnesses said the couple did not respond to the train horn, which sounded for at least 45 seconds before they were struck.

But Detective Tony Bartolotto of the Los Angeles Police Department said detectives have rejected the suicide theory for two reasons: the noisiness of the surrounding commercial area of San Fernando, which may have drowned out the engineer’s warning, and the couple’s devotion to each other.

“I have a hard time buying that they did it intentionally,” Bartolotto said. “If you’re in love, you’re not going to destroy yourselves. . . . I believe they just didn’t hear the whistle.

Although the teen-agers had been in and out of foster homes much of their lives, and Marc had escaped last month from MacLaren Children’s Center--a juvenile detention facility in El Monte--Bartolotto said the couple’s problems did not appear severe enough to warrant suicide.

“The case is settled at this point. As far I’m concerned, it was a traffic collision,” he said.

The couple’s relatives have maintained all along that the teen-agers died accidentally. At Marc’s funeral Tuesday, they released more than two dozen white balloons in honor of the youngsters.

“They had plans, they wanted children, they wanted to get married--it was not suicide,” said Liva Ballin, the boy’s aunt.

But some of the teen-agers among the more than 100 mourners at San Fernando Mission Cemetery said Marc was deeply troubled, even after striking up a romance with Flora after meeting her in a foster home last year. Marc was a member of their “tagger posse,” or group of graffiti vandals, and went by the name Droops, they said.

“I think he heard the whistle,” said a 15-year-old boy who identified himself only as Tony.

“He used to say he had a lot of problems and wanted to escape from everything. This was the only way they felt they could both be happily together.”

Officials at San Fernando Middle School, where Flora was a ninth-grader, said they regarded the incident as an accident, not a suicide. About a quarter of the 2,100 students at the school attended counseling sessions offered earlier this week, they said.

“Kids can be very dramatic,” said Principal Maria Reza, referring to friends who believe the couple intentionally remained in the path of the train.

“Still, I don’t know if we’ll ever know what really happened.”

Marc’s friends would not elaborate on the youth’s troubles. But Flora’s mother, Rosa Zelaya, said her daughter was tormented by nightmares stemming from the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather.

Flora was placed in foster care two years ago when she was 13, after disclosing that her stepfather had been tying her to a chair and forcing her to have sexual intercourse with him since she was 5 years old, Zelaya said.

The stepfather, Juan Francisco Carpio, was convicted of three counts of felony child sexual abuse and sentenced in August, 1991, to 15 years in state prison, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Zelaya said her husband frequently beat her and her three children, including Flora, with the flat side of a knife, his fists and the hose of a vacuum cleaner. But she said she had no idea he was sexually abusing her daughter until Flora went to school officials and told them her stepfather made advances toward her 7-year-old stepsister.

“He told her he would kill me, her mother, if she told. So she didn’t,” said Zelaya, 38, a hotel housekeeper.

Child welfare authorities removed Flora and her two step-siblings from their Canoga Park apartment, Zelaya said. The two younger children returned to Zelaya two months later, but Flora blamed her mother for failing to stop the abuse and chose to stay in foster care, her mother said.

Zelaya said her daughter received therapy but began to drink and cut classes.

“She was very sad,” said Lillian Carpio, Flora’s 9-year-old stepsister.

Zelaya said she believes that her daughter either did not hear the train or was forced to stay on the tracks by Marc. Police discount the latter theory.

“I just know she didn’t do it,” Zelaya said. “She was a good girl.”