March 9, 2008 -
GamePolitics readers will likely recall the intense media coverage which attended the December slaying of 7-year-old Zoe Garcia.The young Colorado girl's death at the hands of her stepsister, 16-year-old Heather Trujillo (left) and Trujillo's boyfriend, 17-year-old Lamar Roberts quickly gained notoriety as the "Mortal Kombat Murder" due to early reports that the accused killers executed video game-like martial arts moves on Zoe following a session of playing the well-known fighting game.
But a news report in yesterday's Greeley Tribune calls the Mortal Kombat aspect into question. Defendant Heather Trujillo's aunt and former stepmother both spoke to the newspaper:
Both Henry and Southern said Trujillo was never violent toward their children, and they never saw her use any Mortal Kombat moves. Southern said she thinks Roberts made up the Mortal Kombat story to look tough.
"Lamar changed her. He was a thief and not a very good person," Southern said.
While the Mortal Kombat angle appears to have come from comments made by Lamar Roberts to a police officer early on in the investigation, it subsequently became apparent that the victim and her accused stepsister were part of an extremely dysfunctional family.
Following Zoe's death, her mother, Dana Trujillo, was arrested on an old child abuse warrant from New Mexico. Social service records reveal 20 complaints of abuse directed toward Zoe, in both Colorado and New Mexico. A report based on one of those incidents expressed concern that Lamar Roberts was abusive to the child when intoxicated.
However, prosecutor Robert Miller stuck to the video game angle at a preliminary hearing on Friday:
Zoe Garcia was the object of abuse by both Heather Trujillo and Lamar Roberts caused these injuries with Mortal Kombat.
Comments
Hey now don't forget the ice balls, the fire balls, that thing out of scorpines hand. Now if they could do that scorpine hand thingy, I think they'd have a viant case agianst.