Co-dependent of the month: the mother of a dead toddler
Suzie Marie Pena’s mother, Lorena Lopez, announcing that she would press ahead with her lawsuit against the LAPD to avenge her daughter’s death when the L.A. police board concluded after a 15-month investigation that the toddler’s death was the fault of her father, Jose Raul Lemos, a.k.a. Jose Raul Pena, in July 2005. I wrote in “runners-up,”August 2005, that Pena used his “19-month-old daughter Suzie Marie Pena as a shield against police trying to arrest him after being reported for making domestic threats against Suzie’s mother, Lorena Lopez and, in a separate report, for physical threats against Lopez’s 16-year-old daughter. Pena’s family in El Salvador described his relationship with Lopez as ‘troubled’ and punctuated with fights. Pena, an illegal migrant, had been deported in 1995 after a conviction for cocaine possession, but later illegally returned. He pleaded guilty to burglary and other crimes in 1994, pled guilty to DUI in 1996, was arrested in 1997 and charged with gun possession by a felon in 2004. He had 18 aliases, nine birth dates, three fake drivers’ licenses and three fake Social Security cards. Police, who described Pena as despondent and crazed as he randomly shot at police officers, used psychologists in an attempt to get him to talk and gave Pena numerous opportunities to surrender. His family, who blamed police for the death of the little girl, initially denied charges that Pena was under the influence of alcohol or other drugs….Toxicology reports later showed that Pena was under the influence of alcohol and unspecified other drugs.”I added that there were no doubt “hundreds of incidents for which close persons could have intervened, but didn’t. There were also dozens of encounters for which law enforcers could have stepped in with a very heavy hand. Little Suzie died because some were unwilling, while others were unable, to coerce abstinence in her addicted father.â€
Message to Pena’s family: it’s time to admit your role in little Suzie’s death.