commentary by Patrick H. Moore
As we’ve all noticed, most crime news is not good news. Much of it is downright awful. Seems like every time we turn around some poor yahoo and maybe even his whole family are getting raped and/or shot by a conscienceless loser(s) with an attitude. It makes the hang ‘em high folks ravenous for blood and it makes the compassionate crew cringe. But we keep coming back for more because we are happily addicted to true crime. Which, in truth is a very good thing because I strongly suspect, although I cannot prove it, that true crime aficianados have less substance abuse, alcohol and gambling problems than the rest of population (statistics?).
Even so, even the hardiest true crime fan, one with a startling capacity for enduring reports of the most horrific crimes, deserves a happy true crime story now and then. Linking “happy” and “crime” together, while problematic, really does exist in a relative sort of way as a recent rather strange story that comes to us from Golden Gate, FLA, but could come to us from anywhere in our 50 states, demonstrates.
The Janet Gonzalez-Pedro Laboy family was sleeping peacefully last Saturday night in their home in the 1600 block of 41st Street SW in Golden Gate when they were rudely awakened by a loud racket coming from the lower regions of their house. This was the first and most important test in this story which this embattled family passed with flying colors. No one grabbed a gun, or if they did grab a gun, they chose not to use it. This single action (or rather omission in the sense of “I did not grab my gun) nudged this crime story in a distinctly positive direction.
Not that this canny family was so naïve as to launch their investigation unarmed. Hell no! Pedro Laboy and his two teenage sons shrewdly armed themselves with baseball bats before descending the stairs to investigate the noise. Janet Gonzalez apparently stayed upstairs and may have phoned the authorities who soon appeared on the scene. When Pedro and his son got downstairs they discovered that someone had smashed through either a screened lanai and/or a sliding glass door. (This is a determined mode of intrusion which could give pause to even the braver among us.) Still, no one apparently felt the need to resort to firearms.
When interviewed later, Janet Gonzalez told ABC News that she noticed a bicycle outside their house with some of their belongings next to it.”
“It’s very odd because he [the suspect] had our laundry detergent, towels and laundry basket,” Janet said.
But the strange thing was, even after the investigators arrived, no one could find the intruder. The police and the family thought they had checked everywhere. At some point they reconnoitered in the living room.
“We were all in the living room and we heard a noise. That’s when we realized, has someone checked the bathroom?” Janet Gonzalez said.
Unlike in the Oscar Pistorius case, no one in Janet’s family, or the deputies for that matter, fired bullets through the bathroom door. By then, in fact, the deputies had gone outside, presumably to secure the immediate surrounding area. So Janet Gonzalez bravely approached the bathroom door, I imagine with her bat-armed men close behind her, and cracked open the door. There was the suspect, 21-year-old Manual Rodriguez.
“I closed the door immediately, and I told my kids he’s in there. They ran, all of them, to push the door closed so he wouldn’t get out,” Janet said.
Janet raced outside to retrieve the deputies who arrested Rodriguez immediately. He was unarmed but what he did have on him reportedly brought Janet and her husband Pedro to tears.
“He had my little girl’s panties in his pockets and one on the sink,” said Janet. “To me only a sick, perverted person would do that.”
Logically enough, Pedro LaBoy said that he never thought anything like this would happen. Although physically unharmed, Pedro and Janet both said it will take a while for them to feel safe again in their new 41st Street Southwest apartment.
Rodriguez was charged with burglary and petit theft.
Although Janet and Pedro were clearly unsettled by this disturbing incident, they did not seem particularly vindictive. Janet had two words for the intruder:
“Get help.”
* * * * *
So while it is extremely refreshing to note that Janet and Pedro and their teenage children seemed to have no need to Stand Their Ground, the fact the young man was in their bathroom possibly preparing to perform a peculiar action with the help of their daughter’s underpants is disturbing. In the event Rodriguez is a fetishist, which he certainly appears to be, alarmists may be quick to insist that there is no guarantee that he will not graduate from being satisfied by possessing or collecting fetish objects of potential victims to aggressively seeking actual physical contact with them. And of course, they could be right.
But because this is a happy and therapeutic crime post, we must be positive: First, no one was shot; and second, if the system follows up on this properly, Rodriguez may get the psychological help he needs.