On Gabriel Trujillo and other lost children.
February 18, 2012 3 Comments
I am not a first responder.
I am not an officer.
I am also not a paramedic.
I am not sure if I could stomach the horrors these honorable folks see up close when children are involved.
My colleagues will tell you the toughest stories to cover are always those involving the death of a child.
We often get close to families who express grief when they lose someone little and young.
We hear their wails of pain and their anger. We sit in living rooms with them and we listen.
Sometimes they turn to us for answers.
Sometimes they want justice.
Sometimes we are able to give them a voice when there is no justice.
It’s impossible not to feel loss in our own hearts when we leave such interviews or crime scenes. The most stoic of us can hide it well and bury it deep.
Others quickly brush it off like water and move on to the duty of the deadline so quickly, I can only wonder if they will remember what they saw and heard.
Sometimes I play this role.
But I know my colleagues remember like I remember.
I can’t count how many scenes I’ve rolled up to where a family is grieving near crime tape or where I’ve met a devastated mother or father.
Too many shootings, too many child abuse cases, too many neglect cases, too many drunk driving cases.
When I worked in Albuquerque, I remember driving around town with my wife on the weekends.
An errand to the grocery store would turn into a silent memorial in my head. I would drive by a park, a neighborhood or a street where a little boy or girl had their last moments.
I would picture the young dead standing there, like ghosts, looking back at me.
I never knew them, but I told thousands of people about their short little life and showed their faces.
There is a small piece of them in me today because I took piece of them and I shared them.
And sadly another child has arrived and is now ingrained in my memory.
His name was Gabriel Trujillo. He was just 4-years-old.
Today I saw his family weep….hard.
I met them a few hours after they let Gabriel succumb to death at the hospital. The little guy was on life support for the past three days.
His maternal grandmother told police he fell off a chair, but police believe she beat him severely.
I flinch inside just picturing the crime in my head like a movie. I can’t help it.
And like many of these horrible stories, the story of Gabriel involves a simple photograph we used to acknowledge him.
There’s nothing like the innocence of a child captured by a camera. You can’t express it in words. This is why we show photographs of children.
The public needs to see their little faces and remember they lived in circumstances that could have been changed and prevented.
But for many of us who share their stories, the mental memory is often so much more vivid.
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To report child abuse in Colorado, call 303-866-5932. Even it makes you feel uncomfortable or awkward to get involved, remember your discomfort is far less than what children like Gabriel may be experiencing now.
- Gabriel Trujillo, 4, died of alleged child abuse. His grandmother faces charges.




