A child that was wanted by so many

I have lived in Albuquerque for most of my life and some of the news that comes from the city leaves you scratching your head. There are some weird, tragic and wow kind of stories.

A story that recently came to the news was all three. Police were called out to a park to investigate a little boy's shoe sticking out of the sand. They found a 3 to 5 year old boy who had been buried underneath a playground at Alvarado Park. Police said he had been dead for more than 48 hours. There was outrage from the community on why someone would just leave a boy buried at the park. But that outrage turned into compassion for the little boy. Police were having a hard time IDing the boy because of his youth not having medical records.

So the community decided to hold candlelight vigil's at 9pm each night until the boys identity was found. Neighbors took up
donations for the boys funeral and one local mortuary took to the story of the community trying to help and donated the whole funeral. Different names for the boy came about one was Baby Justice the other was Baby Angel. Eventually the media and community members used Baby Angel. This set of images is from the first night.











I was amazed on how many people came out for this boy's vigil. Complete strangers that would just take the time to pay their respect and pray for justice. Some would leave candles others would leave toys. Tears were shed for this unknown boy. I heard majority of the people saying they would of taken the boy home if the parents didn't want them.



The vigil on the first night had more than 80 people coming for this child.











The steady crowd seemed to stop around 9:20 or so
and a few people just stayed as long as they could.

On Thursday May 21, 2009 police found a suspect and brought her in for questioning. It was the mother and she told police she suffocated the boy and buried him at the playground. The ID of the boy was released as Tyrus Toribio. The mother is currently in jail on an open count of murder charge among child abuse charges.

If only the mother knew how much this boy was wanted and loved by so many.

Warriors being sent off

Today, I went to the Santa Ana Event Center to document the sendoff and yellow ribbon ceremony of more then 240 Army National Guard members from the 720th Transportation Company. They will be deployed to Iraq and be attached to a Oregon unit for a year. First they will go to training for a month and ship out. This is one of the largest deployments for a guard unit from New Mexico.

This ceremony was to pray for the safety for the troops and have the families spend time together. These are always tough to photograph because you don't want to intrude on people's lives but you want to show people the struggles of deploying service members.

I have the most respect for our service men and women who put up their lives on hold and go over to a foreign or domestic mission for our country. They give the most for our country and seldom get the pay they deserve.

Its always tough seeing children with their dads or moms holding on to them before they are sent to war. I can't imagine not seeing my kids for a whole year. There is so much that will happen in that year. Its a tough time for both sides. The soldier who has to fight and the support at home who has to raise the kids.




This last picture sums up all the things that go with fighting a war is saying goodbye to loved ones. The troops get to spend 24 hours before they have to report for duty so the families do get to spend a day with them before they leave. If you get a chance to thank a service member please do they do sacrifice alot for this country.