Border teen is buried: `tragedy' or `atrocity?'
By THADDEUS HERRICK
Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle
REDFORD -- In an age where children are thought to grow up too fast, Ezequiel Hernandez was a throwback.
He had just turned 18, but few considered him an adult. He was a ranch boy who liked to ride into the Big Bend region on horseback and look for old coins. He talked about growing up to become a game warden or a park ranger or maybe even a Texas Ranger, but he was still a high school sophomore with a slow smile who had yet to get his driver's license.
"To me he was just another one of my sophomore boys," said Teloa Swinnea, Presidio High School principal. "There was a certain innocence to him. A naivete. He hadn't been around the block."
Hernandez was buried Friday, after an hourlong funeral on a desert hill of yucca and creosote not far from where he was shot to death earlier this week by a team of four Marines on an anti-drug operation. Some 500 people stood about the hill, many crying and hugging. The crowd included two busloads of students from Hernandez's Presidio High School.
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/page1/97/05/24/marines-kill.htmlTexasProgresive (1000+ posts) Tue May-09-06 09:41 PM
Response to Original message
3. The last time we tried that 3 US Marines shot and killed a 17
year old American citizen shepherd because he was shooting at rabbits with his 22. Not a good idea, military people are about combat and are not policemen or security guards - what they don't understand they kill.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1143501