http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5793707.html


"When 3-year-old Catherine wet her pants on Monday afternoon, her stepfather got so frustrated that he made her stand in a corner for an hour, soaked in urine.

But after the hour was up, police say, Camilo Garza was still angry. So he started spanking her. His anger turned to rage as he began to hit and kick her tiny frame for nearly an hour, authorities said.

His patience short-circuited by cocaine, Garza beat his young stepdaughter to death over a potty-training accident, police said.

On Tuesday, Garza, 41, was being held at the Harris County Jail without bond on capital murder charges in connection with Catherine Martinez's death. The child — beaten until she was black and blue — was pronounced dead Monday at Memorial Hermann Children's Hospital.

Her mother told Child Protective Services workers that after the toddler stood in the corner for an hour on Monday, Garza, who had been using cocaine and taking pills, started to spank her. He then made her stand on a rail about four feet off the floor in their one-room shack, CPS officials said.

The little girl tried to sit down. He made her stand up. She fell off the rail.

He started slapping her on the back of the head, according to the mother's report. His fury built with every blow.

"The mother described everything from grabbing her by the neck and smashing her head into the wall to kicking her while she was down," said CPS spokeswoman Estella Olguin.

The beating lasted for about 45 minutes, police said. When it ended, the girl was turning blue. Her mother tried CPR, then called 911. "

And she watch him do this?What kind of mother/person is she? Damn what in the hell is wrong with people and acting like animals. Even a female animal would protect its young. I hope there is a special place in Hell for these 2

They must be going to charge her with something surely.

And again..........I repeat absoloute MF's. Steralize em.....

She was powerless and scared. I bet he'd have killed them both in his rage.

You can act all high and macho now, but if you were in her situation, watching a man in a blind rage beating something/one up. You'd be sh**ting yourself.

Surely they are going to charge her as well. I can't fathom a mother just watching her child be beat to death.

I have to disagree. As a mother myself, I would put my life on the line for my child. I don't care how scared I was, my motherly instinct would kick in...even if it killed me. Not only that, but she watched the child be beaten for 45 minutes. She could have called the police and possibly had them there in time to save the child's life.

I agree, none of us were there and although we like to think we'd have done something about it you never know until you're in the situation yourself.

WRONG Who the hell are you. The b****** would have died right then and there. I am not a mother or a father. There is nothing high or Macho about doing the right thing. I guess I am not a coward like you would be.

I do not think wolfnight was being high or macho in any way Chokmah ... it is so hard for most people with a soul to understand the actions of others, especially illogical actions out of fear.

My mother weighs only 105 pounds and is the most gentle soul ... besides this one time when some drunk punched my sister at a community softball game and threatened her with death if she moved. I find it hard to believe that a person can punch someone in the nose while biting them in the back of the neck at the same time. Found out later that some idiot had pointed out the wrong person and the drunk later apologized .. from jail.

This is not a gun in face situation, but different people will act differently in similar situations.


Hey Wolfknight ... even with this string of hatred that has been in the news recently, hell will be reserved for those who cause fear, not those who fear the fear.

ummm - something is wrong with this story. NO mother would stand around and watch something like that happen to their child. since it took place over a 45 minute period, she had ample time to do something/anything. every woman i know would have atleast tried to save the baby. i mean, damn. grab a lamp or something & bust his head open with it. run to the kitchen, grab a knife & stab him. SOMETHING. ANYTHING. i don't understand this at all. mothers get extremely defensive, protective & aggressive when it comes to their babies. or atleast all of the ones i have ever known do.

As a mother , no matter who it was I would have interfened noone is going to hurt my kids, that's not being high and mighty just a natural instinct. If the woman was so scared why didn't she ring the cops at the start of the attack?
I hope they both get locked up in the normal part of a prison with their crimes known to the other inmates.

Domestic abuse has incredibly complicated psychological implications, often with the person who is being abused doing nothing about it for several years as they feel it is their fault etc. If this guy was beating his step daughter in a blind rage, then chances are the mother had been subjected to this kind of treatment at some point.

I'm not condoning what this guy did - it's disgusting and despicable and he needs to be put in jail for the rest of his life, I'm just saying we can't blame the mother for not intervening - we weren't there!

Clicky

Battered person syndrome

A friend of mine was beaten by her husband for some time. She was a strong woman both physically and mentally and actually worked with young people who may have come from abusive backgrounds themselves (she did the same job as I do), her husband was physically considerably smaller than her and she could have floored him if she had wanted to, but her wore her down psychologically and as far as she was concerned he was beating her and it was her fault. No-one who knew them was aware that it was happening and in public they were a perfectly "normal" couple. Then she finally managed to break away and sought refuge in a women's hostel - it was only then that we found out what had been happening.

I totally agree with you Wolf .

Support network for battered women - why we stayed.

Some peope, who go through hell and fight back get more hell than they bargained for. People can have their spirit broke and some people know that fighting back sometimes only makes it worse.

I will not take up for the actions of a few after their hell. You have a phone and a will ... you get the hell away and call the police.

at the very least ..

Maybe, maybe not.

Have you ever been in a situation like this? With a grown man in an absolute rage beating someone up?

Actually yes. My ex-stepfather tried to beat the crap out of me, but I was 16 years old. My mother, sister, and myself faught like hell until we got him off me.

Of course you would.

Have you ever even SEEN anyone in a complete rage? I have - although nothing to do with me, just 1 raged guy beating on 2 other guys. It took a quite a few policemen to just stay sitting on him to keep him down, at least 5 big men, never mind handcuffing him and getting him into the police-van.

You can jump in and start beating them all you want, they'll not go down until they're physically broken. And they'll most likely break you first.

It's all fine and dandy claiming you'd "Do the right thing" and jump in guns blazing, its easy to claim in the safety of not being there. Hell when I saw the raged man fighting, a big lad next to me - although he could have perhaps ended the fight right there if he jumped in, just stood there. You just blank out and have no idea what you're meant to do, you don't have time to think. Most people go into a blank state of mind when seeing someone turn into a primal killing machine.

I'd like to claim I'd jump in to stop a raged man from... Well raging. But raging people aren't the type to think and are fuelled by hate and anger, they hold nothing back.

Schnaffler has it right too. If the guy was capable of doing this to a child, he's more than capable doing it to anything that moved. This can't be just a fluke of happening, it's got its roots. And I'd guess they're domestic roots, maybe not physical beatings but psychological beatings. In the article, the mother sounds, to me, pretty broken. If she had any sense, she'd have left the husband and fled to a relatives house or some such.

I ain't saying she's not partly to blame, I'm just not jumping into the old "I'd have kicked his ass" bandwagon without actually knowing how the situations played out.

The guy deserves prison for life and I hope he gets it.

Edit:

I missed the part about him being drugged up to.

The mother should have just got up and left when he was at work...

Then atleast you'd know what to do, I'd hope.

Most people who see a raged man - an actual raging man - blank out and have no clue what to do.

I hope you never come across anything like that again .

*Shakes his head* Were all freakin doomed.

i assume ya'll were witnessing a fight among grown men. i agree, it is best to let men fight it out & not get involved most of the time. however, if you're saying that you would stand & watch a grown man beat & kick a 3yr. old to death over a 45 minute period without atleast TRYING to do something - then you are a punk! ! !

You don't know this... Powerless and scared? What, no doors in that shack? No windows? No phone? She may've been scared, but I'd wager it was more about losing her husband/boyfriend than her daughter.



I sure wouldn't. I'd grab the first "equalizer" and smash his head with all my might.
How you can defend that woman is beyond me... A helpless, vulnerable child was being, literally, tortured. There isn't an excuse in the universe that can make her non action acceptable.
I'd die for my children - and I believe most mothers would. That woman didn't deserve to be a mother. She should be beaten to death herself. Contemptible.

Things like this make me really angry.I like everyone else can't understand why she just didn't leave and go to a neighbors for help for her baby.Have you ever read the book,b****** out of Carolina? forgot the author's name,but it was even a movie.
A girl,I'll call her Joan,has a mother who gets married. The step dad slowly starts beating the girl and in the end winds up being beaten and raped by him. What does the mother do,she sticks with this jerk.Why,only God and the author know why,but it does happen in real life and is very sad.

Don't worry ,they go to jail, and the prisoners will take care of the two.They''ll get jail house justice.
Had several notorious cases in San Antonio.Yeah,these people need to be permanetly sterilized.

You are right. But I bet this guy was a fat druggy and not much to be scared of. I mean he's beating on a 2 year old. I bet she atleast tried something.

That poor, poor baby. I just don't understand. It's so monstrous.
How can anyone stay with a man like that?

I'm not defending her.

I'm simply poking at all the holes people are ignoring; as in, looking at other areas of the case and not a simple "GUILTY OMG EVIL WOMAN" mindset.



Of course, but if you read what I wrote, you'd have noticed it in reference to the pure rage, add that rage along with drug use.



That's what myself and Schnaffler have been pondering. Along with the backlash for actually not jumping into the same band wagon as everyone else and actually thinking.

But then, people do tend to believe everything in the media, despite it not telling the whole story.

It doesn't say she didn't fight back, it also doesn't say she did. It doesn't say the husband abused her, it also doesn't say he didn't. It doesn't say the woman just watched, it also doesn't say she didn't. It doesn't say anything about anything, apart from the man killing the child.

It's just that everyone jumps to conclusions and immediately calls the woman a bad mother - without actually knowing anything.

She may be a bad mother, she may not be. I suggest people go back a page and read Schnaffler's post, to get a small gist of why she may have stayed and was unable to do anything. (Notice, the 'may' .)



Maybe, but the article doesn't really say anything at all. It's just full of blanks and explanding on four 'small' areas - the killing, the mans drug use, the social services weasleing out and the womans small clipping of a tiny testimony of the man killing the child and how the kids death started.

I'm with you all the way on this. It was unfortunate that she didn't help her child but, as I've said before, we weren't there and we don't know the background. I'd like to think if I were in that situation I would have fought back, but that's hypothetical and until faced with the situation I can't predict how I would react.

Lets hope the authorities can get to the bottom of it and bring justice to those at fault.

thanx a lot for the link Schnaffler. I hope many people go to that site .

I think the guy should be made to stand in a corner till he pee's himself. Then he should be beaten until he turns blue and falls on the ground. After that we revive him with CPR. Then he gets shot so he can never hurt another child. Why not?

and the criminal mom ?

She needs to go to a sports store and get some balls ... otherwise I do not believe that there is enough evidence to do anything but leave her to some professional help ... I mean really to not defend your child, no matter how much hell you have been through is insane.

This is disgusting.

Also depends on how broken you are.

I wonder if the woman was also on drugs? Along with the stepfather.

But yeah, I agree with you on this .
But I doubt anything, if anything, will get out to the press. And even if it does, it will only tell you a snippet of the story leading to even MORE specualtion without evidence.

I totally agree... not just woman but every REAL PARENT I know would put thier life on the line to save pretty much any child, theirs or not. I would die a happy person knowing that I at least tried to save a childs life.

This guy will pay, one way or another he'll get what he's got coming to him.

I'd be in a rage too , to protect my child . I wouldn't feel fear just rage at this man for hurting my baby The police would have to pull me off him !!
I can imagine this & I don't even have kids.

("You can act all high and macho now, but if you were in her situation, watching a man in a blind rage beating something/one up. You'd be sh**ting yourself. ")

nope- id be sh!^ting all over the m-fer trying to hurt the poor little kid. the fear of harm or death would be irrelevant in that situation!
problem is, her selfish a@# was probalby to high to realize what was going on-or she was to scared to call the cops out of fear that she would get arrested.

stories like this, and people like that make me sick

The mom waited 45 minutes to call 911, WTF. Thats one of the reasons why some people just shouldn't have kids, if only their neighbors were nosier

i do ... and you are absolutely right .

After reading the whole article through the link, and reading everyone's comments, I have to say that I'm not sure what to think or feel about this mother. On one hand, I'm of the mind that I would probably end up killing anyone who tried to hurt my daughter (course, I have a temper, esp when it comes to underdogs/helpless people ie. children being abused/picked on), and can't understand why she did nothing. On the other hand, I know/have read what being in an abusive relationship can do to a woman's psyche, and esp if she was also on drugs she wasn't thinking clearly. Because the story doesn't expand on her relationship with the man, or her background, I'm reserving judgement til I hear some more details.
As far as the man himself, he's easy. I hope he has the same thing done to him that he did to this little girl, every day in jail, for the rest of his life. Period. Death would be too easy. Make him suffer.

Exactly.

True Crime

I hesitated reading this story, but after I did, it seems to me that there may be more to it then what the media printed. A normal instinct would be for a parent to defend her child, but circumstances could prevent this. Does anyone remember back in the 80's when Joel Steinberg (New York) was convicted of manslaughter for beating to death is 6 year old adopted daughter. This reminded me of the same scenerio. Steinberg's partner was also physically abused by him leaving severe damage to her face and permanent spinal injury. When the story first came out we all thought the same thing. How could a mother watch a father kill their child. It was only weeks later that the media released what had been happening to the mother. This is another tragedy for another child. I wish it would all stop...

It'd be easy to blame the mans actions on drugs. But then, like alcohol, drugs just bring out the other side of the user.

I was reading Schnaffler's link, page 1 or 2, and although you read the womens reasons for staying and think "well, she needs some balls then." If you really look into it, you see how conflicting the whole dilemma would be; to help yourself but then not thinking you can.

On the other hand, she could just be another druggie / a bad mother.

The article reads like a whole story, but there's nothing but tid-bits in about 4 areas, expanded to seem like it's everything. So many holes in a paper-thin report.

Terrible mother, even worse stepfather. Just sad...Hope he gets the electric chair, she gets at least 20 years in prison.

What a sorry sack of S**T. Its people like him and her, Yes i said her he mother. That need to be taken out in a field and shot.

That's just sad...

****ing idiot. Out of all the drugs, Cocaine would make the most sense for his actions.