[California 2006] A Mistaken Gang Shootout to A Human Life Loss

❆ Documentary: Why Did You Kill Me? – Netflix

❆ Time: February 24, 2006

❆ Location: Riverside, California

❆ Victim: Crystal Theobald

❆ Murderer: Julio “Lil Huero” Heredia

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  Crystal Theobald

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  Julio “Lil Huero” Heredia

❆ What Happened

Crystal Theobald was killed while sitting in the passenger seat of a car driving pass an intersection. The car was mistaken to belong to an opposing gang, which led to Heredia of 5150 stepped out of his car and opened fire.

❆ Personal Rantings and Thoughts

The fact of the case is quite obvious and self-explanatory less than halfway through the documentary – or so I thought because the documentary was a little dragged out, so my sense of timing might not be right there. Watching the documentary, I had a strong feeling that this particular case was not representative and remarkable in terms of depicting the severity of gang violence in Riverside in 2006.

This might have been due to the people that the Netflix’s documentary chose to interview, but the attention was taken off of Crystal Theobald almost completely and instead moved on to other aspects surrounding the case. Her name was continuously used back and forth to justify several awful actions, though.

It seems a little counterintuitive, but what grabs my attention in the case were Theobald’s mom Belinda Lane actions before and following her tragic death, as well as the sentencing length of William “Jokes” Sotelo.

The gang, and the killer themselves are of course worthy of blame here, and they have been punished by the Court. However, there is one more that didn’t serve her part. It’s Theobald’s mom Lane. Lane portrays herself as a upfront and direct woman who was not afraid to speak her mind at all, yet the content of her speech was of serious problem to my ear. This might have been due to evil editing, but rather than talking about how Theobald was like when she was alive in more details, she concentrated more on her “achievements” spreading drugs out in the street and her records with drug use and sell. Her logic seems inherently fallacious since she wants to incriminate all of the 5150 gang members (who were sitting in the same car with Julio Heredia that night) for “indirectly” killing her daughter even though they didn’t take part in any incriminating way, yet she lied about certain details so the police wouldn’t investigate her sons (who were Theobald’s brothers) and she wouldn’t collaborate with the police at all even when told reasonably to. The one that broke it for me was when she decided to continue on with the Myspace war-waging between the gangs, which led to multiple innocent people had their cars burnt publicly in the street. And she wouldn’t stop, she formulated a grand party and sent invitations to gang members so that they would come and she would somehow single-handedly shot them down one by own. Luckily this eccentric plan was stopped before things got out of hand.

I might be exaggerating here because all in all she was a mother who lost her daughter to a shootout and that’s her coping mechanism: to be loud and disruptive to other people’s lives too if need be. But I just couldn’t bring my mind to accept it. She let the gang burnt others’ cars down and wouldn’t stop, she manipulated and forced a teenage relative to chat with the gang on Myspace even when she had been obviously burnt out emotionally and did not want to continue. Maybe if she had stopped at fighting for all the gang members to be incarcerated I would have understood and empathized with that, but the extent she went up to was plainly unjustifiable. This case would have been frankly forgettable to me if not for Lane’s wild reactions.

So after that, we had William “Jokes” Sotelo being incarcerated for 22 years just for driving the car of Julio Heredia the day of the incident. The only reason I could think of for him to get such an extraordinary harsh sentence like this is for deterrence purposes. Riverside was known to actively wipe out gang activities and gangs in general swiftly and aggressively at the time. He eventually took a plea deal and pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Another thing I found troublesome in the documentary was when Julio Heredia’s sister held her brother’s pictures when he was young and talked about their difficult childhood. It really was a difficult one, I couldn’t have countered that in any way. However, what bugged me was the fact that she was still so agitated that her brother was “sold out” by fellow gang members, who were telling the truth so they could get immunity – even though telling the truth got their house burnt down by the gang in revenge which almost killed their parents. But yes, she was still so upset that her brother went to prison because the gang sold him out, and none of her interview responses mention the victim’s family in any way. In her mind, only her brother and herself were the victims. That did not sit so well with the audience. Both her and Belinda Lane were so unapologetic it’s hard to empathize and acknowledge their sufferings, even though we obviously know they are partly the victims themselves.

In the topic of death penalty, one of Heredia’s attorney Souley Diallo’s quotes was really heartfelt and universal across cases: “That person’s entire life has to be investigated because ultimately, you’re not just killing that part of the person that committed the crime. You’re killing all of them. Their story has to be told. How they got to where they were.”

To conclude, I thought this was a really sad case but in no way unique, and that too is the sad part of it. When these supposedly good sons and good brothers come together to form brotherhood and protection for each other, somehow some groups got associated with unlawful activities. It was unfortunate how they feel the need to be protected in their community in the first place, and how joining this group/gang was essential for them to have their whole family not touched upon. Going deeper into this socialization between gang members would probably require another full page, so I’ll stop this post here and hope that the formation of gangs would be assessed from the very cause of the problem, instead of only punishing in the court where things have been long overdue for some.

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