commentary by Patrick H. Moore
A 78-year-old South Seattle grandfather named Honorario Yano has committed the ultimate sin and if there is eternal justice he will surely pay a heavy, heavy price (and though I’m not usually an eternal justice guy, at times like this I lean in that direction).
Let’s begin with Yano’s 11-year-old granddaughter Anahlia Cowherd, a fifth-grader at Aki Kurose Middle School, whom he shot and killed on Monday night. Anahlia, who was active on her social media Wattpad blog, had been crying out for help for some time because she claimed Honorario had been constantly sexually abusing her.
Just hours before her grandfather shot and killed her and her mother on Monday night before turning the gun on himself, Anahlia posted what Andy Campbell of Huffington Post rightly calls a “final panicked entry”:
“Help… Me…” she wrote. “He threatened me… He actually threatened to KILL my family. Right now I’m in my mom’s room, the door locked, my dog close, my brother here, my Grandpa somewhere, my Grandma is not home… My mom is coming… I’m so scared.”
Sadly, poor Anahlia might as well have been talking to the cruel North Wind. No one had any help to bring and around 8 pm that evening, Yano shot his 39-year-old daughter, Christine Dela Isla, and Anahlia, before turning the gun on himself. The only one to survive the carnage was Anahlia’s 10-year-old brother.
Police found all three bodies after the killer’s 10-year-old grandson called 911 at 8:17 p.m., according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The boy told police that he escaped after his grandfather pointed a pistol at his mother and sister and shot them. He said he fled after he saw Yano shoot himself.
Strange that the grandfather spared Anahlia’s brother but he did and the boy, who is now staying with relatives, will somehow have to try to pick up the pieces.
A neighbor named Jerome Mannan reports that he saw a young boy, barefoot and limping, leave Anahlai’s home on Monday night.
“He was frightened, you could see that. I feel sorry for him because he looked traumatized,” said Mannan. “The fact that three people are dead? That’s horrific.”
Anahlia’s father is named Terrell Cowherd. Mr Cowherd, who hadn’t seen his daughter since she was six years old, was able to find Anahlia’s Wattpad blog online after simply searching for her name. Though her username is anonymous, Anahlia names herself in one piece she wrote more than six months ago, in which she details long-term sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather.
It’s not clear why Terrell was searching for his daughter online the day after she was killed. In any event, he says “he found his daughter’s blog alleging abuse from the grandfather on Tuesday morning and called police. While he waited for a call back from Seattle Police Department, he received a call from another detective telling him about the deaths.
“When I Googled my daughter’s name, the blog popped up,” Terrell said. “The only conclusion I can come to is that she must have actually got to the point where she was about to call police, and I guess that was his way of preventing her from doing so.”
It takes tremendous courage for a sexually abused child to go to the authorities (assuming the accusations are true), and the tragedy here is that Anahlia put her faith in her blog and the kindness of the cyber world, which, as is often the case, did not respond, at least not in time. It’s also odd (though not unusual in this era) that her father found out about the sexual abuse by going on his daughter’s blog.
Honorario Yano
For his part, Terrell Cowherd believes that what his daughter wrote is the horrible truth:
“I’m Anahlia Cowherd … and I’m gonna bring justice to all girls who have been touched.”
Rarely have I seen the call for justice spelled out in such point-blank and moving fashion. It’s both inspiring and heartbreaking but it doesn’t do a damned bit of good.
Neither did Anahlia’s mother Christine do a damned bit of good, not that she didn’t want to, but because she waited too long and didn’t have the strength (and quite possibly had been abused herself by the despicable Honorario.)
In one of her posts in which the child described years of sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather, she wrote, “My mom said the next f—— time he does this she’s gonna call the police.”
But of course “her mom” very possibly would have done nothing, like she had apparently had been doing for far too long.
In a kind but sadly ineffectual gesture, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray rushed to the house to join police after the shooting.
“Three citizens of this city are dead, and it involves guns,” Murray said.
The police, speaking technically, say Yano had no criminal history. I would say, based on Anahlia’s allegations (if they are true), he has nothing but criminal history.
The police also say that a motive for the killings hasn’t been established.
Terrell Cowherd, however, has revealed what he thinks Yano’s motive was, the fact that Anahlia was on the verge of going to the authorities.
* * * * *
When I began lashing this post together I was so furious I could barely see straight. Now I have a thought, one of my suggestions, and I know damned well it won’t be instituted but here goes:
First of all, although our school system is full of child molesting teachers, the fact remains that most of these molesters go after teens, not little boys and girls.
Here is what should be done:
No later than the second grade, every school in America, public or private, should hold special classes in which improper touching and sexual abuse of any kind is clearly explained. Every child should be urged in the strongest possible terms to report any such improper touching to the authorities. A good way of doing this would be to teach the kids that they can call 911 to report these incidents.
I realize that this will result in some false accusations, which is a problem. On the other hand, if children who are being violated have no recourse (which of course is all too often the case), the abuse will continue and with each awful act on the part of the abuser, another piece of the child’s young soul will be chipped away.