Abel Ochoa had not used crack for 10 days. His wife, Cecilia, had asked him to stop drugs, after more than two years of addiction in which he had squandered his family’s money, spending up to $ 300 a week on drugs. He had gone to a rehabilitation center, but then continued using cocaine.
That sunday August 4, 18 years ago, the withdrawal syndrome surpassed him: after returning from Mass, he asked his wife to buy him $ 10 of crack, smoked him in the yard, and 20 minutes later he grabbed a revolver he kept in his bedroom and started shooting.
“The gun was already loaded, and I entered the room where my family was. I started shooting while they were sitting on the couch ”, Ochoa confessed.
He killed his wife, 32, and his nine-month-old daughter, Anahi. Her other daughter, Crystal, 7, tried to flee to the kitchen, but her father chased her and shot her four times in the back.
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His father-in-law also died, Bartolo Alvizo, 56, and a sister-in-law, Jacqueline Saleh, 20. Another sister-in-law, Alma Alvizo, was injured but managed to escape and told the police.
Ochoa had left the house in his wife’s car, a Toyota 4Runner, leaving the five bodies behind, but was arrested half an hour later after trying to get money from an ATM, and He confessed immediately. He said he couldn’t take stress anymore, that he had tired of his life. The gun had left her on the kitchen table.
During the trial, the Prosecutor’s Office said the shooting was due to “the anger and frustration” that Ochoa felt towards his wife for having hidden that he had a son before his marriage. His lawyers, on the other hand, maintained that it had been a drug-induced “delirium.”
Ochoa was sentenced to death.
This Thursday, with 47 years and after having spent the last 17 in the death row, Ochoa was executed by lethal injection in the Huntsville penitentiary. After receiving the dose of the sedative pentobarbital, he closed his eyes and showed no reaction: 23 minutes later he was pronounced dead.
“I want to apologize to my political family for all the emotional damage,” he said before the execution, when he was already tied to the stretcher before the sight, through a glass, of several relatives of his victims. “I love you all and I consider you the sisters I have never had,” he added, “I want to thank you for forgiving me.”
Among those who saw him die was Jonathan Duran: “After 17 years, I, my family, the whole tree, we can finally conclude the duel, we have had justice.”
The Mexican consulate in Houston has shown after execution its rejection of the death penalty in a statement condemning this deal “Cruel and inhuman”. Ochoa was Mexican-American, although during the trial he identified himself as a US citizen; Mexico had requested clemency from the Texas authorities, who refused to cancel the execution.
