By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

Feb. 26, 2003

OAKLAND —The mother of a man facing possible execution for killing an Alameda County deputy sheriff told jurors on Tuesday that she often beat her son, abandoned him in their native war-torn country and had him “quite controlled.”

Trying to help save Reuben Eliceo Vasquez, 28, from a death sentence, Angela Castillo took the stand for more than two hours, testifying about her family’s tough life in El Salvador before coming to the United States.

She said that Vasquez was the second of what would become three of her children born in the small Central American country. Her first child had died, Castillo said, and she had hoped that her son would fill the void left by her daughter’s premature death.

But he did not.

“I would hit him very hard,” she said through frequent, emotional pauses. “I don’t know why I was so hard on my son.”

Vasquez, who is the only one of three men convicted of killing deputy John Paul Monego to face a possible death sentence, sat silently at the defense table with his head bowed. Jurors can consider his entire life when deciding whether he should spend the rest of natural years behind bars or be sent to the state’s death row.

Castillo said that she suffered from an abusive relationship with her husband, but nevertheless wanted to join him in the United States in 1983. Her country was falling apart as leftist guerillas battled with the military in a war that claimed about 75,000 lives when it finally ended in 1992.

Shootings were frequent and dead bodies were common sights in village streets, she said. Castillo told her then-7-year-old that her father needed her and then she disappeared at one day at dawn.

“For me it was difficult to leave my children behind,” Castillo said through an interpreter. “I had to leave my children behind.”

She returned two years later, scooping up the two kids she had left with her mother and sister. They settled in California’s Central Valley where she worked in a factory and in the farm fields picking tomatoes.

Vasquez was enrolled in school, where his mother hoped he would learn English to help her communicate. After only several days without results, Vasquez received a beating, she said.

He eventually graduated high school and enrolled in California State University at Stanislaus where he failed miserably, school officials testified earlier this week. After four years of classes, they said, he was still only a freshman.

The problem, they said, was that Vasquez had attention deficit disorder and found some classes, especially math, nothing short of punishing. He changed his major several times, finally settling on communications shortly before his 1998 arrested.

Vasquez, of Modesto, Miguel Galindo Sifuentes, 23, and Hai Minh Le, 24, both of Turlock, robbed the Dublin Outback Steakhouse the night of Dec. 11, 1998. Monego, 33, of Brentwood, was gunned down as he investigated an emergency call made from the Regional Street restaurant.

All three men were convicted of first-degree murder earlier this month, but Sifuentes and Le were not held to face a possible death sentence. They like will receive at least a 25-year prison term when they are sentenced later this year.

For Vasquez, the possibility of a death sentence continues as the penalty phase rolls into what is expected to be the final day of testimony today. Judge Alfred Delucchi said lawyers will present closing arguments and the case could be submitted to jurors for deliberation as early as this afternoon.