Shooting Capped Years of Violence, Relatives Say

A woman fatally shot by her estranged husband Monday had filed an application two weeks earlier seeking to keep him away, claiming he was violent and had threatened to kill her.

Days after being served with that temporary restraining order, Jose Valeriano followed his wife of 11 years as she dropped off their youngest son at school, then stepped behind her as she walked home and fired two bullets into her head, authorities said.

“I love you, baby,” witnesses heard him call out while lying next to her body and firing two fatal shots into his own chest.

Caught in a mix of grief and outrage, members of Hilda Valeriano’s family wondered aloud Tuesday why law enforcement was helpless to protect a 34-year-old woman struggling to inch her way toward safety.

“I can see why people get frustrated that the law is not on our side,” said the victim’s sister, Alma Mercedes Ruiz. “She was trying to do the right things. And we told the cops before [that] he had a gun, that he was threatening to kill her. Why not go, ‘OK, let’s go check the house; we have a reason to’? I know they are here to help us, but what good does it do? The person is dead now.”

Ruiz said her older sister had been struggling to get out of a marriage marked by physical abuse for both herself and her children. And it seemed last year that she was making progress. She had left her husband, after he came home drunk one night and began punching her once she refused to give him the keys to the family’s truck.

She filed for divorce in 1996, but the case was still pending, according to court records.

But she got closer to independence--dating again, making plans to get her high school equivalency diploma--Jose Valeriano, 38, became increasingly obsessive and violent, Ruiz said. He even showed up at his wife’s apartment earlier this month to beat her up, Ruiz said. He was arrested in that incident, but was released a short time later with no charges having been filed. Oxnard authorities were unsure Tuesday why the case was dropped.

“She had just had enough,” said Ruiz, 27. “She finally started saying, ‘I’m a good person. It’s hard for me to realize that, but I deserve better.’ ”

Jose Valeriano met Hilda at a movie theater in Oxnard more than a dozen years ago. They were attracted to each other immediately, but Ruiz had her doubts about the relationship. “I sensed it,” she said. “I really did. But they started dating.”

The couple married in Mexico in 1988 and settled in Oxnard. Hilda Valeriano had two children from a previous relationship, and through the years the couple had three sons.

At first, none of Hilda’s eight siblings knew of the suspected physical abuse. About two years into the marriage Ruiz first heard about it, from her sister’s oldest children.

“I would hear this and I would confront him,” Ruiz said. “And of course we’d get into arguments. It just got worse over the years.”

Eventually, the children became the target of his abuse, too, Ruiz said.

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But Hilda stayed. As the mother of five children, she thought it would be wrong to break up her family. As a Catholic, she believed divorce was a sin.

“And she was very, very scared of him,” Ruiz said. “He would threaten to kill her if she talked about leaving.”

Hilda’s courage was bolstered, however, after Jose physically abused her oldest daughter, family members said.

The last straw, Ruiz said, was when Jose came home drunk and began demanding the keys to the family’s truck. Hilda’s refusal was met with a severe beating, Ruiz said.

The next day, she packed up her five children and moved into her parents’ Oxnard home.

Jose begged his wife’s siblings to tell her he was sorry--sorry he had hit her, sorry he had abused the kids, Ruiz said. He wanted her back.

But Hilda refused, relatives said.

“She would just say, ‘I can’t forgive all the abuse, for hitting me and hitting my children,’ ” Ruiz said. “She was trying to get away, but he became very obsessive.”

Ruiz and her sister got an apartment together in Oxnard, and Hilda made plans to get her high school equivalency diploma.

“She was getting excited,” Ruiz said. “She said, ‘I want something for my future, for my kids.’ ”

The more independent she became, the more her estranged husband’s obsession grew, relatives said.

He called repeatedly. He followed her. He bought a gun and showed it to his children.

“This is going to be the end of her,” Ruiz said he told the children.

He once told his mother-in-law: “Her life is going to end. Somehow it’s going to end; everything is going to end. She’s for me and nobody else.”

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Hilda was frightened, but remained strong, Ruiz said. She didn’t want to be scared into returning to a life of torment for herself and her children.

On the morning of Jan. 10, Hilda awoke early and began getting her 6-year-old son ready for school. She went downstairs and found her husband sitting in the living room, according to her application for a restraining order. He held a cigarette and drank from a beer.

He grabbed at her shirt and demanded to know where she had been the night before, accusing her of dancing at a Hollywood nightclub.

Hilda struggled to free herself, eager to get her son to school and to get them both away from Jose.

“He then struck me in the face about three times,” Hilda wrote in court documents. “He hit me in the forehead and in each side of my face. He hit me really hard with a closed fist.”

Breaking free, she ran to the office of the apartment manager to call the police. Jose was arrested and his wife was advised to get a restraining order. She filed for one the next day.

“He is in custody, and I am terrified of what he might do to me when he is released,” she wrote.

Aside from a few phone calls from jail, with Jose begging his wife to drop the charges, Ruiz said Hilda and her relatives stopped hearing from him. They thought the worst had passed, that when he was served with a temporary restraining order he had gotten the message: It was over.

On Sunday, Hilda borrowed her sister’s car to go out for the evening. At 5:30 the next morning, Ruiz’s phone rang. “She said he had been following her,” Ruiz said.

Hilda, calling from another sister’s house nearby, waited for Ruiz to come and accompany her home. When she arrived, Ruiz said, she saw Valeriano’s truck parked outside. He started the engine and left as Ruiz approached, she said.

*

Back at their apartment, Ruiz prepared to go to work and warned her sister not to take any chances, to keep the doors locked.

“She said, ‘Don’t worry, if he comes around I’m calling the police. I’m not playing around,’ ” Ruiz said.

By 11 a.m., Hilda set out to take her son to his elementary school a few blocks away.

On the way back, her husband called out to her. She turned around and screamed, witnesses said. He fired, twice, striking her in the head. Then he shot himself.

Relatives are frustrated that jail, a restraining order, police--nothing seemed able to protect Hilda Valeriano. Not even her own family.

“You start blaming yourself,” Ruiz said. “What else could I have done?”

Ruiz said her main concern, now, is for the children. There are five of them without a mother or father, and money is tight for Ruiz, who is caring for them.

“It’s very hard for me right now,” Ruiz said. “We don’t even know how we are going to pay for the funeral. We have nothing. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

But Ruiz is most saddened that her sister lost her battle for freedom. And she worries that other women in her position could meet a similar fate.

“I’m just scared for women trying to get out on their own,” Ruiz said. “It took 10 years for my sister to come to her senses, and still this happened.”

Times staff writer Tracy Wilson contributed to this story.