Mother Tries to Turn Her Grief Into Power

It’s not like Marisa Martinez thinks she can avoid the heartache. From some things, she knows, there is no escape.

Four months have passed since her youngest son, Vincent, was gunned down in front of the family’s south Oxnard home, in a random shooting that remains unsolved. He was 19 and on the verge of fatherhood. He died in his father’s arms, on a patch of lawn now marked by religious icons and rosary beads.

He would have been 20 today.

But Martinez has discovered that a mother’s grief can be a powerful thing. Unwilling to let the cold-blooded shooting fade from public view, she has collected $10,000 from family and friends and offered it as a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her son’s killer.

She also is starting a local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, to provide support to others struggling to absorb similar losses.

Martinez is quickly becoming one of Oxnard’s most outspoken crime fighters, appearing at City Council meetings and on talk radio and cable TV programs to urge residents to rise up against a wave of youth violence washing over this beachside community.

“Whose child will be next?” Martinez asked recently, standing at the small frontyard memorial with Vincent’s girlfriend, Christina Bojorquez. Bojorquez, 18, is due in October to deliver the couple’s baby, whom she plans to name Destiny.

“This is the most horrible nightmare any parent can experience,” Martinez said of the slaying. “We need to stop this. We need to come together as a community and bring justice to our streets.”

Vincent Martinez’s March 11 death is one of 10 homicides so far this year in Oxnard, and one of two still unsolved. Six of the dead were under the age of 30.

In the last 13 months, city leaders have added gang officers and homicide investigators to the police force and obtained an injunction against Oxnard’s largest and most violent street gang.

Oxnard Police Chief John Crombach said investigators have identified “a strong person of interest” in the Martinez case and hopes the reward will supply the tip that leads to an arrest. Police have set up a tip line at (805) 982-7223.

“A lot of times all you need is that little shred of information,” Crombach said. “Your heart just goes out to this family. Their lives have been forever altered.”

Marisa Martinez still shudders at how quickly one bullet can shatter a family. It was a typical Friday afternoon and Vincent was getting ready to have dinner with his girlfriend, who had just learned she was pregnant. The couple had planned to tell Rodrigo and Marisa Martinez the next day that they were soon to become grandparents.

Vincent was waiting on the front lawn to be picked up when four males in a white Ford Bronco pulled up to the curb. One of them shouted something and shots rang out. As he lay bleeding, Vincent told his family that he was dying. And he told them that he loved them.

Vincent Martinez was not a gang member and there is no evidence that the shooting was gang-related, his family and police say. He was about to start a maintenance job at a convalescent home. Family members described him as the jokester of the clan and a devoted Dodger fan.

“The house is now very quiet,” Marisa Martinez said. “How can the person who did this sleep at night? There have been so many sleepless nights in our home.”

Martinez’s response to her son’s slaying is not typical.

Crombach said it’s rare for family members to offer rewards in such cases. Sharon Tewksbury, national volunteer coordinator for Ohio-based Parents of Murdered Children, said most people are so consumed by their pain they can barely function in the months after a loved one has been killed.

“I would say what Marisa wants to do is the exception rather than the rule,” said Tewksbury, who became involved with the organization after her husband was killed in 1983. The organization provides support to all survivors of homicide victims, not just parents.

“It’s a different way of thinking about it, a different way of accepting what has come to you,” she said. “You can let it eat at you and destroy you. Or you can take all that grief and anger and do something positive in the memory of the one who was lost.”

Martinez wants to focus on the positive: the big-hearted way Vincent led his life, how he shined on the football field and basketball court in high school. And she wants to imagine how he would have taken to fatherhood, how he would have passed along his wide smile and jovial manner to the daughter he never got a chance to know.

“I don’t want my son to die in vain,” she said. “I’m trying to do whatever I can to stop the violence, to tell people we can’t be afraid. No family should have to go through this.”