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An artist's rendition of the fourth Aztec emperor Itzcoatl, whose name has been in the news for tragic reasons.
To many in the Register’s comments sections, the most important thing to know about 23-year-old Itzcoatl Ocampo of the class of 2006 at Esperanza High School — who (the presumption of innocence temporarily placed aside) over the course of 24 days apparently murdered 53-year-old James McGillivray, 42-year old Lloyd Middaugh, 57-year-old Paulus Cornelius Smit, and then (on the night of Friday the 13th) 64-year-0ld John Berry, all homeless men, all asleep, the last of which occasioned his arrest after being pulled off of a block wall by a security guard after witnesses chased him down — appears to be the derivation of his last name.
“Send him back to Mexico,” wrote one commenter. “Check his immigration status,” wrote several. Others bayed for capital punishment, to be administered summarily without trial, if possible, “a Yorba Linda High Noon hanging” for a beast.
I wonder whether the reaction would be quite the same if his first name was Francisco or Hernando. You don’t (or at least many of us don’t) come across the name “Itzcoatl” every day — although anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of Mexican history could probably guess that it traces back to the Aztecs. I looked it up: Itzcoatl was a great military leader — the fourth emperor of the Aztecs, a key founder of their Empire. Like the Mexican politician Cuahtemoc Cardenas, son of the celebrated populist politician Lazaro Cardenas, Itzcoatl Ocampo’s given name suggests parents with ample pride in their pre-Columbian history. For most Americans, an Aztec name may sound atavistic; but is it any more so than the names of the celebrated butchers Francisco Pizarro or Hernando (Hernán) Cortés — no offense intended to any Franciscos or Hernandos reading this — whose Spanish names now register merely as “normal” Mexican ones? (The uncle in whose house Itzcoatl had been staying is named Raul.)
For some, this is apparently just the story of a mad Mexican with a knife. That seems to miss the mark widely.
Consider: Itzcoatl Ocampo was also a Marine. He served in Iraq.
Now, by far most ex-Marines and other Iraq War veterans, just like by far most Mexicans (whether named for Aztec ancestors or not), do not commit serial murders; they are instead upstanding members of society. Such demographic statuses might provide the beginning of an explanation, but the road from there to any satisfying story is long and narrow, not to be traversed so easily. What more do we need to know? For all but the most pigheaded and bigoted, there seems no plausible pathway from his ethnic identity itself to his committing violent stealthy attacks against the homeless. Most serials killers in the U.S. are non-Hispanic Caucasians.
Is there a plausible pathway to an explanation based on his military service? A string of comments posted this morning in dear departed Geoff Willis’s diary wondering if the killings were part of a gang initiation — the best that can be said about this is that perhaps it was a clever ruse to lull the killer into complacency — see to think so. And maybe it’s true — but rather than succumb to the “crazed military veteran” that for decades plagued those who served in Vietnam, we would want to know more about this particular case.
For example, we might want to know the likes of this:
[A] relative and a friend of the suspect described a young man who appeared to be deeply troubled after his return from service in Iraq in the summer of 2010.
“When he came back from Iraq, he was sick,” said his uncle, Ifrain Gonzalez.
For the last year, he had been telling relatives that he was seeing and hearing things, Gonzalez said.
The last time Gonzalez saw his nephew was at a Christmas Eve party. Ocampo, he said, had told a cousin, “I did something terrible, but don’t worry.”
It was four days after the killings had begun.
An LA Times profile adds more detail. He was born in Mexico, and moved to California at age 1.
According to his uncle and his friend, Ocampo had one goal: getting away from home. His parents, who both worked in factories, were splitting up, and their house in Yorba Linda was being foreclosed on.
He then joined the Marine Corps.
When he returned to the U.S., Ocampo moved into a rented bedroom that he shared with his mother and a younger sister and brother in Yorba Linda. His main activity was playing video games, Gonzalez said. Things got worse when he learned a good friend had been killed in Afghanistan.
Was he crazy before he joined the military? (Is he crazy now? Since when?) He is described as having been “reserved and a little goofy” in high school, but is said to have come home changed. According to an uncle, Ocampo made and broke several appointments for psychiatric evaluation. Several commenters note what is printed as his quote in the 2006 Esperanza High School yearbook:
“Walk the streets I walked alone. Then sit and judge me.”
Is the dramatic quote indicative of some mental problem, as many who comment on it seem to think, or is it just a high school kid being emo? Well — Ocampo was accepted into the Marine Corps, so one would hope that they evaluated him reasonably well before arming him. On the other hand, weren’t recruiting standards being lowered at some point when the Iraq War was at its height? Make a misbegotten war of choice enough of a priority and sometimes maybe you don’t delve too deeply into the quality of your cannon fodder.
We know something else of note as well: six months ago, Ocampo, his mother, and a younger brother and sister moved into a room in the house of his uncle Raul, described by his landlord as “an ideal tenant”. Sounds like economic straits to me. (I would not dream of contacting them to inquire. They have enough trouble right now.)
Aztec. Marine. Depressed. Dispossessed. We have clues into what may have led Itzcoatl Ocampo onto a journey of murder, but no conclusions. We have to avoid the facile ones. Do we generalize the danger he has posed to … Mexicans? No, that’s dumb. How about to Marines or other military personnel? The problem is that few ever reach this depth. How about to the depressed and delusional untreated mentally ill? There’s a better case there. To people who have lost so much that they have to move into tight lodging with their family? That could be an aggravating factor.
How about to some combination of the latter three, combined with some bad luck in the roll of the dice? That starts to sound more plausible. Not every patch of dry brush starts a forest fire, but it’s smart not to be unconcerned about generating more and more dry brush.
All these, except the racial heritage that some people so quickly invoke, seem to have played a possible role. Each is a roll of the dice, a whack of the ax at the rope constraining the beasts within. Train someone to kill and put him in battle. Fail to treat an apparently growing mental illness. (“I did something terrible,” he told his cousin. He knew, at some level, what he had done.) Add the stress of economic privation. Mix well.
Not everyone snaps, given such a mix — but some do. And who pays the price? In this case, it’s not those who sent him (under false pretenses) to war, who provided too little help for his mental hygiene upon his return, who crashed the economy. It’s powerless homeless men, who on the final occasion turned out to include someone widely beloved.
What of the above factors can we control? Controlling mental illness and economic privation is desirable, but hard. But one possible contributing factor does stand out: if PTSD was a factor, that was the one that was preventable. (And that’s what I take to be the point of our commenters.) We did not have to send this young man to war. We didn’t have to send anyone to this war. We did not have to leave some random targets among the non-cosseted many to bear the brunt of a soldier’s misdirected fury.
One reason that we are supposed to hesitate to send people to war, to save it for the most extreme provocations — a lesson we learned in Vietnam and then last decade again ignored — is that when you send people to war, a fair amount of the time bad things like this tend to happen. Not in any particular case, not enough for any particularized suspicion without much more. Going to war, spending a year or more in the killing biz, is not a death sentence or a sure mark of future inclination towards mayhem. It’s an ingredient, that’s all. It just makes the possibility of disaster greater; it guarantees nothing.
And yet here we are: four stabbings by a depressed and dispossessed Iraq War Veteran — a firstborn son who was named by proud parents in honor of an Aztec warrior.
This is a rude question, one to which we may never know the answer, but it’s one that is rightly being asked:
Should the murders of four homeless men in 24 days be added to the tab for the Iraq War?
Isn’t that the possible contributing factor that we could have prevented?
…
I don’t want to forget the victims, so I’ll leave the penultimate word to an OC Register commenter named Audie Voorhies. It’s not about Ocampo at all, but about his gentle and religious white-bearded final victim, who apparently reminded people of Santa Claus:
“John was a very nice man. He liked Arizona sun tea and canned chili from CVS. He would always go to CVS. People would buy him food without him having to ask for it and he would always say, “God Bless You” and was very humble and genuinely surprised that people came through for him. This is not the first time he was beat up by thugs. Some young punks at Yorba Reginal Park beat him up last year. When I saw John last year, I asked him about it. He shrugged it off and said that, “It wasn’t the first time; he was beat up alot.” John wouldn’t have hurt a fly. I hope that he receives a large funeral. He was a very modest man. I am just heartsick over this sad situation.”
The homeless have been scared — but far more die of neglect and exposure than of serial murder. We are learning about the homeless in these times, sometimes through their murders, less frequently through their death by more natural causes. We will no doubt, before long, be learning even more, if — after the coverage of the murder is gone — we decide to pay attention.
Many people have no idea what it is like to be under the stress of being killed daily and having the people of the country that your trying to help hate you. and you see death everyday some are friends and some are enemies. then to come Back to the country that you call home only to be hated here also you cant find a job and most people dont want to associate with you because they think your messed up because of the time you spent there instead of saying great job and trying to show them that what they were doing was appreciated instead of being detested someday maybe they will fit into society and be accepted as one of the populace.
War veterans needs plenty of help to readjust to civil society. Often, when we calculate the cost of wars, the need for that spending is overlooked. Sometimes, in fact, that spending doesn’t happen at all — and vets can sink into a destructive bog where (depending on what they’ve done in a war) the main skills they’ve learned may have been to solve problems violently. So someone pays the price — in this case, some of the most vulnerable members of our society.
Sometimes wars may be necessary — but not treating those who fought in them like trash is always necessary. Keep that in mind and we’re less likely to go to war without a really good reason.
Yeah until next time a buncha senile hawks come into power saying we haven’t had a good war in a while, and America’s old familiar amnesia returns.
Oh, Please give me a tiny violin!!!!!
The truth is: The Milatary has got to do a better job of screening people who may be too weak minded to endure the triles of war. The Military has got to do a better job in weeding out men and women who may need mental health help, after they come back from war.
No one hates Mexicans because they are Mexican. But people are fed up with having to deal with all the social ills that mostly Mexican Illegal Immigrants seem to bring: drop outs, missing fathers, gang violence etc…. The kids home life is what probably put him over the edge. He comes home to a mother and his siblings renting a room, no job and most likely because he is Mexican, a less than stellar education. The truth is that this kid is a victim of his Mexican Culture and bad Mental Health screening of the US Military.
The line for people to condemn Michelle’s comment begins here.
Yeah, where are those Marine snipers when there’s something that REALLY needs to be pissed on?
Marines only piss on the enemy, so I suppose YOU are next!
What is their to condemn? You cannot condemn the truth.
He is one of many that will either kill, die, jailed or become a welfare statistic. He is a victim of a society that won’t deal with populations who have severe social problems.
He’s a Marine himself. I suppose you think the homeless folks, including the Vietnam vet, are the enemy. Go away now. You’ve done your share of shaming yourself for January.
He was in the military, I don’t think he would be considered a Marine by Marines. The homeless man was a vet and a victim. The killer wore the uniform thats it! If you knew any Marines, you would know that to PROTECT life is the goal and to only kill if they have too! That is a solider!
“Triles of war?”
What are you, the stupidest person on the face of God’s Green Earth? These neo-con, jerk-off wars are creating human craters.
Mexican culture is surprising, Aztecs, Mayans, Aztecs, Zapotecs, Huichol, mixing of cultures and races.
Great writers and Nobel laureates.
The first university in the Americas (including USA).
Do not show your ignorance and lack of culture, show that you actually hate Mexicans because they are Mexicans.
I remember that the first immigrants were English (criminals, rapists, human waste) and those are probably your ancestors.
Yes, I am proudly Mexican, and I’m sure, i have more culture than you could have in 10 lifetimes.
Michelle, you are truly ignorant about what you consider “Mexican Culture”. I was born and raised in Santa Ana and extremely proud of my culture (which is not gangs). I come from a family where a post secondary education is expected and valued. My grandfather was a hardworking immigrant who came to work during the Bracero Program and due to his high work ethic was sponsored by his employer to obtain his green card. He slowly brought his children and wife to the United States legally. My family includes graduates from Loyola Mary Mount University, Stanford, Syracuse University, Cornell, UC Riverside, Cal State Fullerton, and Long Beach State. By saying people are fed up why don’t you take responsibility for your own beliefs and try to educate yourself on other cultures.
Michelle,
It really make me sad your comments, I am Mexican, I have a Master Degree, a Doctoral degree and I speak five languages, I am very well educated, I was educated in Mexico, in Germany and USA.
Do you know how the Europeans think about the American people, let me tell you, when I was in Europe I heard very bad comments about the Americans, for the Europeans the Americans are ignorant people who hardly can speak English and no other languages, you work in Mcdonalds and most of you do not have a College degree.
I think every people is different I do not stereotype anyone and you should do the same, if you do not the Mexican culture I invite you to read books, and to go to Mexico City you will find that we are hard working people, and you will find a very nice educated people in Mexico, as I find some nice educated people in USA.
You should also go to Europe if you have some day the money to go, you well fell what Mexicans fell here, because for the Europeans you are not European, you are a criminal who left from Europe to America as immigrant to have a better life as most of the Mexicans who go to USA.
Careful, Mr. Nelson – many view anyone 50 and older as falling into that senile senior group – and I believe you have crossed the half century mark, correct? Do we have a senile editor on our hands here?
Arggh… sometimes I feel that way.
Remember though, 50 is the new 30, 60 is the new 40, in short old is the new young. Young guys these days want to BE us.
And Cheney and Rumsfeld were the new Caligulas.
When I heared that the suspect arrested in the killings was Latino I cringed. I knew that the Register commenters and those like Ms. Quinn would seize upon that insignificant fact and use it as their main focus of their rants. As Greg pointed the Register commenters didn’t disappoint and neither did Ms. Quinn.
Sadly I think the fact that he was a Veteran who returned from battle in Iraq and a Veteran who lost a close friend in Afghanistan is a much more significant and relative fact. Many of our Vets don’t get the necessary care when they return.
Ms. Quinn’s comment referring to these soldiers as “weak minded” is despicable beyond words. The fact that she even said that tells me that trying to challenge her for saying it is simply futile.
Supporting our troops is more than just a slogan on a magnet made in China and afixed to your car Ms. Quinn. Supporting our troops means that we should do all we can to help these men and women adjust back into society after seeing the evils of war. Perhaps if we had done that with Itzcoatl Ocampo were could have averted these heinous crimes.
Amen. What Ms. Quinn fails to understand is that many of these people are PERFECTLY HEALTHY, emotionally and otherwise, BEFORE going to war. It is the trauma of war itself that changes a soldier. No amount of “screening” can change that sad reality.
When I heard that the suspect arrested in the killings was Latino I cringed.
MQ Says: You must be cringing all the time?
“Sadly I think the fact that he was a Veteran who returned from battle in Iraq and a Veteran who lost a close friend in Afghanistan is a much more significant and relative fact. Many of our Vets don’t get the necessary care when they return.”
MQ says:
Men/women see terrible things all over this world, they don’t become monsters over them. From the DA himself, the guy is very bright and knows EXACTLY what he was doing and most likely the US military did not know that this guy was a monster going in.
“Ms. Quinn’s comment referring to these soldiers as “weak minded” is despicable beyond words. The fact that she even said that tells me that trying to challenge her for saying it is simply futile.”
MQ says:
What are you blabbing about? What I said, it that some people cannot stand the tries of war and maybe too weak minded to deal with what they might see in war. But I don’t think the guy who murdered 4 people was weak minded, I think he was a monster who just wanted to kill.
OK, that’s it for you today. We’ve had enough Quinn for now. The rest goes in spam.
“Men/women see terrible things all over this world, they don’t become monsters over them.”
Not true at all. Men and women are sometimes forever altered by the terrible things they witness in this life.
People like Quinn think they know EXACTLY how a person should react to the horrors of war. Thing is, they’ve never been there. But they LOVE sending other people into war! They’re the very personification of cowardice.
I think war is pointless! This country should not police the world. And I know exactly what war is like, partially the sound of a mortar going over a house…..I would never send a civilized man/woman into war. War has changed, it is now an enemy we can’t fight on a battle field. I would just stop the enemy from traveling to this country and advocate for other civilized countries to do the same.
And that is me done with this blog, it has become nothing but a left wing vomit:(
Vern, it will be very hard to replace Quinn’s circus of the mind.
That man killed those people because? Maybe the trial will bring out the reason.
Either way, this is another case where the ten story test could prove useful.
michell true with all the other voices leaving.. this site reminds me of the daily kooks far , far left bloggers with the excepetion of a few . no gw no stanley all the others and now you . oh no . i am here alone . i check in from time to time to see what post are on here but not as much as i used too . . the site has turned extremely far left now . wich i dont think the former owner wanted it this way , but to each his own .. vern good luck in trying to get voices from the other side . with this group that comes on here i wish you the best but you got your work cut out for you .
Well for christ’s sake, if the blog is so “left” in your eyes, then just go spend time at another blog that will tell you what you want to hear.
In claiming to be “here alone,” you’re insulting at least a half-dozen conservatives and right-wing libertarians who participate here.
“Extremely far left” does not mean what you seem to think it means. I just looked at our last twenty published stories. Which are the “extremely far left” ones? I think that you’re either “extremely sensitive” or “extremely cavalier about making accusations without caring whether they are true.” We are losing some of the voices that make actual mainstream conservatives cringe (I don’t include Willis in that), but if anything that’s doing a favor to the right.
YES THIS IS THE NEW DAILY KOOKS . I GO ON HERE JUST TO BLOW STEAM AT PEOPLE LIKE YOU ANON .. OR WHO EVER YOU ARE AND DIAMOND WOW IM SURE MAINSTREAM CONSEVATIES ARE GOING TO CRINGE HAAAA WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ WHERE SHAKING IN OUR BOOTS you need to add 10 ,000 more words to reach your quota ..
The strange thing is that, even with all that, your flavor of commenting is still preferable to Quinn’s.
It is? I’ve always felt that The Grating Juan’s comments almost always amount to something like “same to you but twice as much…neener, neener neener.” Quinn at least brings a bit more game than that.
Does this deserve a poll?
I’m with Anon on this one. Quinn is twice the man The Great Coward is.
Easily proven….. Grating Juan, do you think that Scott Walker was a coward for running away from the protest against him?
He won’t answer. At least Quinn would attempt to address things that she wasn’t comfortable with.
That may be, but he’s less than half the bigot. Or maybe it just washes over me because of all of the capital letters and exclamation marks.
Grate One irritates me a lot less than Quinn, in fact his short, predictable, illiterate, all-caps rants are positively amusing compared to Quinn’s hatefulness. I guess it’s all a matter of taste.
Some of you are disappointed in Grate One because he doesn’t respond logically or honestly. I really think you’re expecting too much from someone of his mental capacities. I really don’t think he understands what anon or demagogue or anonster says to him.
diamond , quinn and i is all that is left . if she decides come back .. i come on here when ever i spot something i am intrested in .
OK, putting aside the Grate One (and the dearly departed Willis (whose presence I will miss here), Quinn, and the various “From the”s), let’s tote it up: we have cook, junior, Newbie, Le Dai Khoa, the Winships, Bushala and his Bushalettes, KenLaysNotDead (although he’d probably deny it) — we have lots of (by my lights, anyway) commenters from the right here, most of which are capable of defending themselves quite well. What we’re missing is some atavistic bigotry that (in my opinion) harms the Republican Party anyway. Luckily, anyone who wants a dose of that can just go the comments sections of the Register or OC Weekly, which would be enough to drive the likes of Jesus, Gandhi, MLK2, and Nelson Mandela into a mad frenzy of destruction.
My dirty secret is that I’m perfectly willing to argue with conservatives and libertarians (though I reserve the right to be mildly snotty and snarky.) They add something to the conversation, test my beliefs, occasionally change my beliefs. While the policy of this site has not been to banish bigots, on the other hand, I don’t find that they add much and I do find that they drive a lot of good people who just want honest discussion without vicious vitriol. I don’t think that I really deserve the credit that some people are assigning me for the change in temperature here, and of course it’s Vern’s blog to do with as he will. But honestly, there are some sorts of comments that I won’t miss, if people actually don’t come back. There is such a thing as “polite society.”
hey democrap walker turned his state around by stoping crazy union hacks .. turned his state to a surplus .. wish he would come here and do that .. unions are killing busniness , hostess , and latelty thank god for the courts in sd to tell the cops to get dressed on their own time . trying to put down getting dressed to go to work they should be paid for that , might as well put down going to the can too .. and you wonder why calif is broke .
Grating Juan.. you stupid old coward.
Why don’t you answer the question instead of making up your own.
This question has been asked of you by others on this blog as well as by me:
“Grating Juan, do you think that Scott Walker was a coward for running away from the protest against him?”
It’s a simple yes or no answer.
I politely ask you to give us your answer.
“unions are killing busniness (sic)”
No they’re not. Most businesses in the wake of the recovery are experiencing record profits. And they’re hoarding cash instead of hiring.
Also note that GM has quietly regained it’s #1 position in worldwide auto manufacturing.
So while the union ” hacks” are fabricating cars, The Great Coward is fabricating lies about our exceptional work force.
To bad that we can’t depend on our immigrants to support the efforts of the blue collar workers of America. Not very patriotic, and not the kind of people that we should want here.
Another point of interest….Romney thought that we should have let GM fail. Crazy.
El mundo está harto de las guerras que causa su nación y no por eso juzgamos o culpamos a la población Norteamericana, ni a su cultura de los errores que comete su gobierno. Muchos estadounidenses pasan por una situación similar a la de Izcóatl, no es un problema exclusivo de la cultura Mexicana, antes de tener una opinión hay que informarnos más. “La ignorancia es un mal que aqueja a muchas personas”.
The causes of this crime and many others are almost always much more than the Mass media indicates; in fact the way the Mass media presents it is one of the leading causes or at least the way they decline to present the rational research on how to prevent these and many other social problems. By withholding an enormous amount of good academic work studying this the Mass Media has prevented many social changes that could have drastically reduced the level of violence in society long ago.
Now the majority often spend time bickering among about prejudicial details. I don’t agree with all of what Michelle Quinn says but some of the root causes are almost certainly from early upbringing although this has little if anything to do with race except for the fact that some races are deprived of opportunities to get a good education and avoid violent oppression which is often passed on to the innocent like the homeless victims.
If anyone is interested I addressed this in further detail in a blog of my own about this subject (see web page link in my name). If it is like a typical case, a large amount of the causes, as far as I can tell might involve early child abuse if it is similar to many other crimes although it is too soon to know for sure. Some researchers including Dorothy Otnow Lewis, have found that they rarely if ever find a crime like this where there isn’t earlier problems that probably dated back before his military career; although incidents in the war may have made things worse.
While Googling it I found this blog and decided to cite it since I thought it made some good points.