Shooting at Courthouse Leaves 2 Dead

As a 9-year-old boy watched in horror, his father shot and killed his mother Tuesday morning outside a family law court building where they were to have a custody hearing, authorities said. The gunman was then shot to death by sheriff’s deputies.

Witnesses said there was little warning before the shooting erupted. It was the latest incident of a volatile domestic dispute turning deadly in courthouse confrontations.

“He grabbed the son from her, reached down and kissed him, then pushed him aside” and shot the woman as she tried to run away, said witness Jessica Perez.

He shot her again after she fell on the shaded lawn of the small, office-like court building, witnesses said.

Bystanders, who were lined up outside to enter the building, stood terrified just a few feet away as two deputies, who were inside checking people through the lobby’s metal detector, dashed outdoors and immediately shot the gunman.

“It happened fast. Real fast,” said a woman who refused to identify herself. “Everybody was pretty much frozen, but some were crying.”

Some of the people went immediately to the side of the 9-year-old boy, she said. “They tried to keep him from looking at her,” she said. “It touched my heart.”

The unmarried couple--identified as Felipe Mirabal, 31, and Mariella Batista, 28--had fled separately in boats to the United States from Cuba, where she had alleged to authorities that he had abused her, according to Riverside County court records.

Mirabal and his son left Cuba first, were picked up by the Coast Guard and settled in the Riverside area. Later, Batista, too, fled Cuba by boat, also was picked up by the Coast Guard and settled in Mobile, Ala., according to the court documents.

The woman moved to Riverside last year and worked for six months as an aide at the California School for the Deaf, then returned to Mobile with her son in February, telling her boss that she feared for her safety.

“She came in one day and said, ‘I have to leave. I’m afraid he’s going to kill me,’ ” said Daniel Morales.

After the father claimed paternity rights and sought custody, the mother and boy flew to Riverside on Monday for Tuesday’s mediation hearing to resolve the custody dispute. Mirabal was living in Norco and working as a janitor in Orange County, according to the Riverside County coroner’s office and court records.

The couple encountered each other outside the court building--a renovated medical office--exchanged words, and tussled over the boy before the shooting broke out about 7:40 a.m., witnesses said.

One of the dozen people waiting to enter the courthouse suffered a minor gunshot wound in her leg, but it was not known whether the bullet was fired by Mirabal or the deputies, said Riverside Police Department spokesman Steve Johnson.

Mark Lohman, spokesman for the Riverside County sheriff’s department, said that although deputies provide security inside courthouses, there is insufficient staffing to patrol the outside lawn, where parties to emotionally pitched cases congregate before the building opens.

“It would be nice if we could have security outside the building,” Lohman said. “But we have to focus our security measures on the inside.”

Courthouse-area security is an issue of grave and frustrating concern to court and law enforcement officials. And although security in recent years has been enhanced in family law courts in the wake of courthouse violence, officials say little can be done to provide additional security in public areas outside the buildings.

In September, a man shot and killed his ex-wife in a corridor inside a downtown Los Angeles courthouse where there were no metal detectors, and a week later a man shot and wounded his ex-wife outside a Pomona courthouse after a child custody hearing.

Judge Rodney Walker, the supervising family law judge for Riverside County, said Tuesday that the layout of his court building--where people must file in slowly through a single small entrance lobby--may have contributed to the tragedy because contentious parties mingle outdoors where there is no security.

“It’s pretty common knowledge that family courts are one of the more dangerous courtroom venues,” he said. “In this case, where people are outside in a long line . . . the easier it is for something bad to happen. There’s security inside, but it’s the outside that turned out to be a killer today.”

A new Riverside County family law courthouse--with multiple entrances allowing quicker access to secured areas--is expected to be completed by August 1997.

Witnesses Tuesday said they felt particularly vulnerable when the shooting began because the early morning line into the lobby snakes up an inclined sidewalk, bordered on one side by the building itself and on the other by a railing.

“When we heard the shots, there was nowhere to run,” said one woman. “There were several shots, then the deputies ran out from the building and started shooting.”

Lohman said the deputies, apparently concerned about the safety of the bystanders when they saw the man still holding the weapon and the woman lying on the ground, both opened fire immediately, striking the man.

Batista’s former co-workers at the California School for the Deaf said they were not sure how they would break the news to the dozen or so handicapped students who lived together in the dorm where she had served as an aide, helping the 9- to 12-year-olds dress and get ready for classes.

“She always had something nice to say about the children, even in situations where they had to be reprimanded,” said Rene Roedel, a counselor in the dorm where Batista worked. “She always looked on the bright side and never shied away from any of them, no matter how great their needs. She’d say, ‘Boy, that was a hard shift. . . . Well, see ya tomorrow.’ ”