Sunday, January 3, 2016

IN LOVING MEMORY OF ELOY CONRAD DURAN III (NOVEMBER 10, 1984 TO JANUARY 3, 2010)



            Eloy Conrad Duran III will always be remembered by Unit 1012. As he was born on November 10, 1984, we will remember him on his birthday and treasure the precious memories of his life on earth. We shall also not forget him on the date he left this earth on January 3, 2010.

 
Eloy Conrad Duran III
(November 10, 1984 to January 3, 2010)



"So long as we live, they too shall live and love for they are a part of us as we remember them."
- Gates of Prayer



Griego: A mourning father's pursuit of justice
By Tina Griego
Denver Post Columnist

Posted:   06/12/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT4 Comments

  
Eloy Conrad Duran III
(November 10, 1984 to January 3, 2010)
Here is a father. He wears slacks and a dress shirt and a necktie and sits across the table from me at a neighborhood restaurant. He has before him some papers and a small digital recorder and appears to be a businessman working over a late breakfast.

Look closer and his exhaustion is apparent. His face is sallow, as if he had been sick, as if all that is holding him together are the tie and the nice slacks.

He talks about his son. About when he was a baby they called him the Michelin Man because he had so many rolls of fat. He was an athlete — baseball, football, basketball — and had a ton of friends who knew him to be generous and loyal and protective of them. The father tells you his son graduated from Kennedy High School and became a father at 20. When the economy tanked, his son lost his job and he and his daughter moved in. His son found work cleaning gutters. 

The father laughs and says his son liked to hoist his little girl over his shoulder and carry her downstairs so they could all eat breakfast together. 

The father says he and his son did everything together. They went fishing, to the movies, to church, and on summer evenings, they sat outside and talked. He says his son was a good man, a gentleman. The father pushes the stack of papers toward me: "The autopsy report is there."

"Name of decedent: Eloy Conrad Duran III. Date and time of death: January 3, 2010; 0858 hours. Age: 25 years. Diagnoses: Sharp force injuries: a) stab wound of the chest with injury to the right ventricle and right lung b) stab wound of the right posterior shoulder with injury to the skin and subcutaneous tissue c) five incised wounds involved the right and left arms with injury to the skin, subcutaneous tissue and muscle."

It goes on for nine pages. Eloy Conrad Duran III was beaten and stabbed. This happened at house party at West Fourth Avenue and Utica Street a little after 2 a.m. on Jan. 3.

Police arrested 17-year-old Jovani Muniz. The district attorney's office charged him as an adult with first-degree murder. Muniz pleaded guilty in exchange for the lesser charge of second-degree murder. Because he had no previous criminal record, he was given a 21-year suspended sentence in adult corrections and seven years in the Youth Offender System. If Muniz does his time in the youth system without incident, he will be freed. Otherwise, he will face 21 years in adult lockup. 

This is a matter of record. It is not the whole story.

Left behind is Eloy Conrad Duran II, who believes his son was set up and jumped at that party by gangsters. He believes others should be punished. He believes seven years for the life of his son does not even come close to justice. 

"It's a farce," Duran says. "My son is dead and (Muniz) will be in YOS taking college classes."

What you need to know about the particular hell Duran occupies is that since his son was killed, he has lost his job, he is filing for bankruptcy, and on that recorder are interviews he started conducting after the May sentencing with witnesses to his son's death.

A young man kills another and from this act come ripples and some of those ripples are tidal waves. I sit with a father, who has at home his 13-year-old son and his slain son's 6-year-old daughter, and I can provide no answers. The police tell me they are not looking for any other suspects. The D.A.'s office says it did not have the evidence to support the scenario Duran posits. Not the premeditation, the beat-down, the gang involvement, though Muniz may have been part of a tagging crew.

All the while, whispers reach Duran's ears: People were drinking and your son, 6 feet, 260 pounds, was really drunk and looking for a fight and 10, 15 guys jumped him and then handed the knife to a 115-pound kid because he'd get less time.

How else, Duran wonders, could a scrawny teen take down a big man?

So, he searches for evidence to persuade police to reopen the case. He undertakes a dangerous course.

I do not presume to know his suffering. I do not know what it is to imagine my child's final moments or to sit in a courtroom and hear the words "seven years." 

I speak to him of his younger son and his granddaughter and he says: "They are all that keep me going now. This is what I have to do. I don't believe justice was served, and I don't know, frankly, what to do about it."

Listen to the recording, he says. I hear him interviewing a girl. She says she saw 10 guys surrounding his son. (Another will tell him she saw four.) "Was this person there?" Duran says. He has photos. "I don't care about names." But the girl is hesitant now. "I don't know," she says.

I hear a desperate father who forgets to stop recording after he finishes talking to the girl. I hear his footsteps and his breathing. I hear him open the car door. I hear him settle in his seat. I hear him cry.

Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.

  
Eloy Conrad Duran III
(November 10, 1984 to January 3, 2010)
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