LaredoBuzz.Com

Courtesy Monica Garcia,

 The trial of David Garza continued yesterday with opening statements before a jury in the 406^th District court.  Garza is accused of having forced a female child to touch his penis and is facing five counts of Indecency with a Child by Contact, a second degree felony with a punishment range of two to twenty years in prison. 

 Early yesterday, Assistant District Attorney Ramon A. Villafranca, Jr. told the jury during opening statements that the case would be about a child facing insurmountable odds towards attaining justice.  The State is alleging that the little girl began being violated by Garza while she was in the first grade and out cried to her grandmother, her mother and a school counselor while in the second grade.

Yesterday’s testimony consisted of a detective with the Laredo Police Department who explained protocol in child sexual abuse cases and then with Michelle Echavarria-Jones, a counselor at a local elementary school.   During her testimony, Jones spoke of the little girl as a child that stood out on the school campus because she was “extremely thin” and because of the cap that she is always wearing.  Jones explained that caps are not allowed on campus but this child is allowed to wear one because of her inexplicable hair loss.  Jones explained that she met with the child on November 14, 2007 and during the meeting, she stated that the child told Jones that Garza would force her to touch his private parts.  According to Jones, the child explained the abuse in detail, telling her, “His private part is little and then it gets big and he tells me to lick it like a lollipop”.  Jones testified that the child told her that she had shared this information with her grandmother; who believed her, and then with her own mother; whom the child said did not believe her.  The child allegedly told Jones that her mother forced her to confront her abuser and that when Garza denied any wrong doing; the child’s mother called her a ‘liar’.  Jones also testified as to the child having told her that Garza had allegedly said, ‘Of all other children, I love you the best’.   

 After cross examination of Jones, the child victim took the stand and pointed out the defendant to the jury.  When asked when her sexual abuse by Garza first began, she stated, “Probably in first grade but I really don’t know”.  The child explained that the abuse initially started when she would arrive home from school and would nap on the floor of her sister’s room.  She said that she would wake up to find herself in Garza’s room where he would make her touch his private parts.  She described how he instructed her to move her hand up and down and how he would “grab stuff from his private part and put ‘em in my mouth”.  When asked where her mother was when such incidents would occur, the child testified that her mother would get out of work and go to the “maquinitas”. 

 The child underwent brutal cross-examination by defense counsel David Almaraz who questioned the child’s intelligence and followed up by asking, ‘Why did you flunk the first grade?”.  Defense counsel also insinuated that she was a troubled child with disciplinary problems.  The State countered on re-direct, clarifying that the timing of the abuse was analogous to the poor grades.  The child then testified that her grades are now excellent (as she has been removed from the abusive environment).  Finally, the child was asked to explain her current relationship with her mother and siblings, to which she testified that her mother has continually asked her to give up her case.  The child stated, “My mom had told me that if I give up my case then she would buy me something I want”.  She also testified that she does not talk to her siblings anymore.