June 17, 2009

We already pointed out this audio recording of the 911 call placed by the lone survivor of that botched home-invasion robbery carried out by Shawna Forde and her gang of Minutemen. But further listening reveals a number of details about the crime.

It begins simply:

"Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband."

The dispatcher begins asking questions and obviously dispatches deputies to respond. As she's asking about the killers, the victim cries out:

"They're coming back in! They're coming back in!"

An exchange of gunfire ensues. When the woman comes back on the line, she explains:

"They told us that somebody had, um, escaped jail or something and they wanted to come in and look at my house or something. And they just shot my husband. And they shot my daughter and they shot me."

"... Oh my God, I can't believe they killed my family."

Brisenia Flores_0df9d.jpgShe explains that the killers walked up cold-bloodedly to her daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, as she cowered and cried, and shot her two or three times anyway.

Later in the call she tells the dispatcher that the shooting began when her husband became suspicious of the invaders and asked them about their guns.

We also learn that the shooters were two men -- both tall, one white with a painted face, the other Latino -- and a "shorter fat woman."

That very much describes the gang that was arrested this week.

Scott North and Jackson Holz have more details on the tape.

Vivir Latino points out that there's been a disturbing theme in some of the coverage -- suggesting that perhaps the family somehow had it coming:

Something that tends to happen when the media covers these types of horrors, is double victimization. In an effort to answer the question why, subtleties, like how immigration has been racialized and how Latinos, painted as immigrants, are criminalized and dehumanized, get swept under the rug.

It certainly does raise the question: Why are the media paying so little attention to this story? Are they still wedded to their favorite narrative, that the Minutemen are just some big "neighborhood watch"?

As we said, that's some neighborhood watch.

I guess they're too busy covering that all-important David Letterman protest.

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