Friday, April 04, 2008
He was her rebel child, but Sara Escobar-Wiercinski had faith her big-hearted son would turn his life around.
Shortly before he was shot and killed outside a Windsor night club, Luis Acosta Escobar and his mom had a heart-to-heart talk she describes as a "breakthrough."
Luis was excited about working during Christmas and seemed to be looking ahead, planning for his future. He told his mom he was proud of himself and that he wanted her to be proud of him, too.
Luis Acosta Escobar and his sister Sarah Acosta Escobar.
"I could tell he was becoming more mature ... he was seeing things differently," she said.
It was a change Sara had been waiting for, while asking only three things of her 20-year-old son for years.
"I said: 'Never tattoo your body, never hurt anybody and don't get yourself hurt.'"
When Luis violated his mom's last rule, it broke her heart.
Windsor police have now confirmed that Luis had stepped in to break up a fight just before he was killed - a detail that was not released to the local media in the days following the shooting.
Sara said she didn't know that her son had tried to be a peacemaker until she began scouring the Internet for information about his murder and came across America's Most Wanted website, which described the last moments of Luis's life.
"It may not be important to a lot of people, but it's important to me," she said.
It was a bittersweet revelation for Sara, a Spanish language professor who teaches in Windsor and Detroit. She is happy to know her son was not the one throwing punches, but she also wishes he could have walked away without getting involved.
"I wish that he'd been a coward," she said. "We wouldn't be talking right now."
Sara was on a beach in her native Panama, on vacation with her husband, Andrew, and oblivious to the chaos that ensued once shots rang out outside the after-hours Box Office Sports Bar on Pelissier Street
in the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2007. By the time the devastating news had reached her, the hunt was already on for Luis's murderer.
Luis died shortly after he was shot twice outside the bar. He took one bullet to the chest and another one in the back when he tried to flee. His suspected killer, Mohamud Abukar Hagi, 25, is still at large.
Sara finally saw her dead son's body on Christmas Eve. "He still looked good. He always looked good."
Over time, her shock and disbelief turned into grief and anger, the poised mother said, clutching a scrapbook that documents the life and death of her Luis Fernandito, as she liked to call him. The scrapbook contains every published article about the shooting, Luis's death notices and some pictures taken at his heavily attended funeral.
Before her son was killed, Sara said she avoided news about crimes and violence in Windsor by changing the channel or throwing the newspaper aside. These days, she is often up in the middle of the night, researching Luis's murder online and clipping newspaper articles about violence in the city and calls for the revitalization of the downtown core.
She started speaking out publicly this week. She is also making her voice heard on online forums such as Facebook, asking people to help with the search for Hagi to prevent him from hurting someone else and urging young people to avoid the Box Office bar and the surrounding area, where other violent incidents, including another fatal shooting, have taken place over the years.
"Sometimes, I feel like I'm angry at everybody," Sara said, lamenting the portrayal of her son as a "little gangster."
Within hours of Luis's murder, tributes popped up on blogs and social networking websites, including numerous pictures of him wearing baggy clothes, bandannas and doo-rags and making hand signs, surrounded by similarly dressed, sometimes heavily tattooed, young men. A picture of Luis wearing an orange jumpsuit in what appears to be the Windsor Jail also surfaced.
It was a side of her son Sara knew well and didn't always approve of. But there was also the other Luis, the "kind and polite" Luis who was honest with his mother when he screwed up, who loved his toddler son Jaevian and common-law wife Talea Dupuis,
and who was doing his best to get his life on track. He was a good, loving person who had many friends, she said, and it hurt her to read comments posted online by strangers who criticized the way Luis looked, the people he surrounded himself with and the places they went to.
For Sara, the real picture of her son is the one that now hangs in the dining room of the Wiercinskis' meticulous home - wearing a crisp suit, with a white boutonniere pinned on the jacket.
"If it was up to me, he would have looked like this every day," she said with a laugh.
Another photo of Luis as a child, smiling next to his older sister, Sarah, sits framed on the living room piano he played when he visited his mom and stepdad. Reminders of Luis, simultaneously happy and painful, surround Sara.
Around the time he turned 17, Luis "got in with the wrong crowd," his mom said. He hung out with people who made bad choices and as a result, made a few himself. He didn't do well in school and got in trouble with the law. At 18, he became a father - an immense responsibility for someone who was still trying to find the right path in life, she said.
Luis's lifestyle was a contrast to his well-rounded upbringing. Raised in a Christian family (his father, Luis Acosta, is a church pastor in Montreal) that advocated strong values, education and ambition, he was fluent in three languages - English, French and Spanish - and had travelled across Europe, North America and Latin America.
He was still a baby when the family immigrated to Canada from Panama, living in Montreal before settling in Windsor. Despite their parents' painful divorce, Luis and Sarah, now 24, had equal opportunity to succeed in life, their mother said. They were nurtured, taught to "dream big" and involved in activities that included piano lessons from an early age.
But like many siblings, Sarah and Luis were different.
Sarah was independent, but Luis needed an extra push. While Sarah brought home glowing performance evaluations from her teachers, Luis's grades were not always stellar.
Sara remembers posting both report cards on the fridge and in between them wedging a brief biography of Winston Churchill - the legendary politician and former British prime minister who was known for his poor academic performance and rebellious nature in his youth.
"I wanted them to see that so that Sarah would not criticize Luis and Luis would know that just because you don't like school ... doesn't mean you can't do great things."
Their differences eventually led brother and sister on diverging paths. Sarah went on to graduate from the University of Windsor with distinction and is now pursuing a master's degree in Ottawa. Luis, on the other hand, struggled to find his niche. At the time of his death, he was working at a car wash. Previously, he had worked odd jobs.
But his mother wanted bigger things for him.
"I used to tell him he could be a social worker," she said. "He was always surrounded with people, he liked to help people. He had so many friends. He had such a tender heart."
Sara said she hopes her story will resonate with parents, especially those dealing with their kids' tough teenage years. She also has a message for city politicians - "do something about the crime in Windsor."
"People are dying. The violence is out there," she said. "The blood of my son is on the wall (of the Box Office bar)."
Sara applauds the efforts of Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association chairman Larry Horwitz, who has advocated a mandatory 3 a.m. closing time for after-hours clubs since Luis's murder.
"I don't know him, but he's my hero," Sara said, adding that she was encouraged this week by further talks about how to revitalize the city core, propelled by a two-day visit from Peter Bellmio, a U.S. expert the DWBIA hired to put together a sweeping report on Windsor's downtown that included a number of recommendations.
"If everybody stepped out, if we all worked together to create a safe Windsor ... closing (the clubs) at 3 a.m. would at least send a message," Sara said. "If that happened before, who knows, maybe my son would still be alive."
© The Windsor Star 2008
R.I.P. Luis-Fer "my boy" I miss you so much.
ever since I saw him in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
