Mother of 13-year-old killed in Portland Nov. 6 says she tried her best, but couldn't keep him from the streets
The alley where Julio Cesar Marquez died Nov. 6. His body was discovered the following Monday morning by an eighth grader taking a shortcut to catch the school bus.
Diana Baxter said she saw her teenage son, Julio C. Marquez, getting "brainwashed" by other kids involved in gangs. She urged him not to wear certain clothes, and wanted him to be home by 10 p.m. each night. A Spanish-speaking juvenile counselor also tried, talking to Julio like a dad, telling him that their heritage wasn't about gang-banging.
But the pull of the streets was stronger.
On probation for assault, he twice disabled his electric-monitoring bracelet, often stayed out late, sometimes not returning home for days.
"I think in his mind, he thought it (the juvenile assault case) was a joke. He met the wrong people and started hanging with them. Toward the end, I did have a feeling something was going to happen, no matter what I did, no matter what I said," said Baxter, a mother of six children, sobbing. "It was getting out of control. But what do you do when you have to leave early for work and don't get home until 6:45 p.m.?"
Baxter last saw her son about 7:30 p.m. Nov. 4, when she dropped him at an arcade off Northeast Halsey Street near 108th Avenue, not far from where his body was found early Monday, Nov. 7. She thought he was meeting friends there, but saw him seated alone in the lobby.
She said she thought that that was odd, so she got out of her car to check on him.
"Julio?" she asked. "Who are you waiting for? Are you sure you're OK?"
"Yeah, mom," he replied, and assured her that his friends would arrive.
"I finally gave him a hug and said, 'I love you.' "
That's her last memory of him.
By Sunday night, Nov. 6, the 13-year-old was at his father's house.
Baxter called there at 8 p.m., spoke with his father's girlfriend and asked that her son be home by 10 p.m. Sunday, as he had school the next morning at 8:30 a.m.
But Julio Marquez never made it home.
His father was driving him to Baxter's home about 10 p.m., but then her son received a call from someone and his father dropped him elsewhere, Baxter said.
Baxter went to work Monday.
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Though Marquez was found beaten and fatally shot about 7:30 a.m. Nov. 7 in an alley beside Colonial Villa Apartments off Northeast Halsey and 107th Avenue, his mother didn't learn until about 3 or 4 p.m. that day.
She was working at her computer when her supervisors walked up and told her a man was in the lobby looking for her.
It was her boyfriend, pacing back and forth.
"What's going on? What's wrong? Tell me," she pleaded.
Her boyfriend, crying, just said: "They found your son dead."
"I just dropped and started screaming," Baxter said.
No arrest has been made, but Baxter suspects her son was killed because of an argument over a girl. When she viewed his body, she was sickened.
"I dressed him up and I saw all the things they did to him," she said. "I'm beyond angry. If I could see the person who did this, I would want to destroy this person. He took my baby away from me. He deserves the worst of the worst, whatever the law allows."
While Marquez's Facebook page was filled with boasts about his allegiance to the Surenos gang, smoking marijuana with friends and gang banging, faculty at the Rosi Hinton alternative school, which he attended this fall, remembered Marquez as a respectful boy, who had a knack for math and mostly got Bs, with a few As and Cs. The week before he was killed, he had missed a few days of school.
His mom said her son had loved to skateboard, play basketball and played the clarinet in band about two year ago.
She wishes she could sit with him on the couch, like they used to do, and watch his favorite cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, or just have him beside her on the couch with his laptop open, listening to music on his headphones. Baxter, who came to the U.S. from Panama at age 15 with an American soldier she married and later divorced, said she always tried hard to work and raise her six children by herself.
"I always wanted to have a huge family for the reason I came to this country with no family," she said.
Baxter, who faces a sentencing Dec. 1 for aggravated theft, said it was a matter of "human error" and didn't want to talk about her pending case. She said she's not even thinking about it.
"I don't care right now about that. I just care about my son, " she said. "Right now, losing my child. I want to be here where he was, which is my home. I don't want to be away from where he was. All I know is my baby is gone, and I can't have him back."
