19-year-old Lamar Roberts has pleaded guilty to child abuse and recklessly causing the death of 7-year-old Zoe Garcia.
This is the so-called ‘Mortal Kombat’ killings because Roberts and his girlfriend and Zoe’s sister Heather Trujillo, beat Zoe to death while allegedly mimic moves from Mortal Kombat.
Roberts is looking at 16-48 years behind bars. Trujillo had previously pleaded guilty.
Again this had nothing to do with video games. If it wasn’t Mortal Kombat it would have been pro wrestling or some movie that they would have blamed it on. They were just two violent kids, nothing more.
In what has been wrongly called the ‘Mortal Kombat’ killing 18-year-old Lamar Roberts has pleaded not guilty in the beating death of 7-year-old Zoe Garcia.
If you’ll recall Roberts and his girlfriend Heather Trujillo allegedly practiced moves from Mortal Kombat on Trujillo’s half-sister Garcia.
Trujillo pleaded guilty in May and as part of her plea will testify against Roberts.
I need to stress that in my opinion, this had nothing to do with a video game and more to do with lax parenting. Trujillo and Garcia’s mother Dana Trujillo has a long criminal record including drugs, prostitution, and child abandonment.
The mother in the so-called “Mortal Kombat Case” has been sentenced for pleading guilty to child abandonment. Dana Trujillo was sentenced to a year’s unsupervised probation. However, these charges are from an incident that happened in 2003 in New Mexico and are not related to the death of her daughter Zoe Garcia.
Zoe was allegedly killed by her sister Heather Trujillo and her boyfriend Lamar Roberts when they kicked and punched her claiming to have been practicing Mortal Kombat moves.
The charges against Dana Trujillo should give you some insight against who is really to blame in Zoe Garcia’s death. I’ll give you a hint. It’s not Mortal Kombat.
A bail reduction request for Heather Trujillo has been denied. She’s currently being held on $100K bond in the death of her sister Zoe Garcia. Trujillo and her 17-year-old boyfriend Lamar Roberts killed Garcia by allegedly imitating moves from a Mortal Kombat game.
16-year-old Trujillo has been charged as an adult and faces up to 48 years behind bars.
Dana Trujillo, the mother of both Zoe Garcia and Heather Trujillo, was arrested this past Thursday on child abuse charges. Zoe Garcia was the 7-year-old killed by her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, Lamar Roberts, when they supposedly practiced ‘Mortal Kombat’ moves on Zoe. Heather Trujillo and Roberts are both being charged as adults for Zoe’s murder.
Dana Trujillo was arrested on an outstanding warrant from 2003 in New Mexico.
But the charges against the girls’ mother, Dana Trujillo, stem back to 2003, when Dana and three daughters lived in Socorro, N.M. Police in the small New Mexico town said Dana Trujillo is suspected of leaving her children, — then ages 12, 4. and 3.
“There was no assault or battery,” said Capt. Mike Winders of the Socorro Police Department. “The crime was that she was not feeding or caring for them properly, and that’s why we issued the warrant.”
It’s obvious that Mortal Kombat had nothing to do with Zoe’s murder, but the media just can’t let that go. It just shows how clueless they still are about video games. It’s not like they haven’t been around for 30+ years or anything.
Weld County’s Department of Social Services of Colorado is being investigated in the wake of the death of Zoe Garcia. As I’ve mentioned, Garcia was killed by her sister Heather Trujillo and her boyfriend Lamar Roberts when they beat Zoe to death while allegedly imitating Mortal Kombat.
Neighbors had contacted Weld County DSS with concerns about Zoe’s well-being, but apparently, DSS didn’t do enough. Yet, I’m sure some people will be too busy pointing fingers at a video game rather than a failure of the system and a horrendous family situation.
This is an article about how Zoe Garcia’s father tragically found out that his daughter was killed days before he was to discuss custody with Zoe’s mother.
However, I wanted to point out just how messed up it was in Zoe Garcia’s home…
Neighbor Rhonda Simonetti said she babysat twice for Trujillo’s youngest three kids, during which Zoe broke down crying and admitted that her bruises came from Roberts hitting her.
“I took a day off work and drove to Social Services in Greeley to file a complaint,” Simonetti said. “I never heard anything back.”
Apparently, other neighbors had called social services as well, but nothing ever happened.
So you have a careless mother, a violent daughter and her equally violent boyfriend, and a failed social services department. So why is Mortal Kombat being blamed, exactly?
I’m sure by now you’ve heard the story about Lamar Roberts, 17, and Heather Trujillo, 16, of Colorado. They’re the dumbass kids who allegedly killed Trujillo’s sister Zoe Garcia, 7, by reenacting moves from Mortal Kombat.
They began wrestling and enacting a game of Mortal Kombat, court affidavits say. Zoe lost consciousness after being hit, kicked and body-slammed to the floor.
The documents say Trujillo told police she was on top of her sister “holding her arms down with her legs while tapping on her chest like a typewriter when the victim passed out.” Roberts was not wrestling but was acting “as the referee,” the affidavits say.
Trujillo said she sent Zoe to bed after she regained consciousness. When she checked on her about 15 minutes later, she was not breathing. Trujillo and Roberts tried to revive the girl in the shower and attempted CPR before calling the mother and then 911.
In an interview later at police headquarters, Trujillo said she tripped Zoe, “punched her in the stomach, karate chopped her lower arms, punched and pinched the victim’s thighs, kicked her in the shins, slapped her stomach and buttocks and poked at the victim’s chest.”
A witness quoted in an affidavit said Roberts told her he had kicked the girl and that his hands were “lethal weapons.”
The witness said Roberts performed a back kick and the girl didn’t get up. He said he and Trujillo “cracked an egg in her mouth . . . in an attempt to see if she was messing around with them” by faking unconsciousness.
I’m sure the one who shall not be named, that’s Jack Thompson for future reference, is frothing at the mouth over this one.
However, this has nothing to do with Mortal Kombat and everything to do with two kids with no regard for the welfare of others. In the case of Trujillo, her own family.
The video game did not make them this way. I would almost lay odds that lax supervision through their lives did.
And would you look at this? It seems that Zoe Garcia has been placed in questionable situations before…
Authorities in Socorro, N.M., filed three counts of abandonment or abuse of a child against Dana Trujillo in November 2003.
The complaint states that Trujillo left her children Heather, Zoe and the 9-year-old, who now lives with Anthony Garcia, in the house with a babysitter and didn’t return that night.
A neighbor complained the next day, and police went to the house with the paternal grandmother of the Garcia girls and woke up the babysitter in the back bedroom. The girls said they hadn’t eaten or bathed that day.
The girls were removed from the home twice, according to Garcia, and then returned to the mother.
So you can imagine what kind of upbringing they had. But some people will claim it was all about the video game. Those people are blind.
Both Roberts and Trujillo have been charged as adults and are looking at 16 to 48 behind bars.
