There are two essays in this package having to do with the murder of Abelino Mazariego.  The second essay is called, “I’m still as mad as hell.”  These essays were written in anger and contain a few redundancies and a few errors.  But in the second essay, I have tried to correct some of the errors in the first because the facts have changed.  I hope that you will forgive the repetition, but the murder of Abelino has stirred my passion endlessly.
The chances are that you never heard of Abelino Mazariego.  As a matter of fact, I had never heard of him either until an incident last week in which Mr. Mazariego was beaten to death.  One of the reasons that you may never have heard of Abelino Mazariego is that he was a dishwasher for a restaurant in Summit, New Jersey named Dabbawalla.  The manager and chef at Dabbawalla is Colin Crasto.  As a matter of interest, or perhaps non-interest, Abelino worked for the owner and manager, Crasto, for 11 years.  For the record, it should be stated that my interest in Indian food is nearly nil.
What happened last week is, in my estimation, a case of at least aggravated assault or murder.  It seems that Mr. Mazariego had finished his shift of washing dishes, which he regularly did.  This occurred around 9 PM.  He left Dabbawalla to sit in a park about half a block away.  On the way to the park, Mr. Mazariego bought himself a slice of pizza.  As he sat on the bench in the little park, he was accosted by three men.  One of them pulled his tee shirt up over his head, the second began to beat him around the face, while the third man took photographs of the beating.  I assume that the third man had a telephone that could take pictures of the proceedings.  Stupidly, the third man circulated those pictures around the teen-age crowd in Summit and shortly they made their way to ABC television.  They were then shown on the air and arrests soon followed.  News reports fell off after the initial impact of the killing took place.  But it is understood that the three participants are being held on manslaughter charges with a bail of $100,000.
Those are the basic facts in the case.  It turns out that Mr. Mazariego, the dishwasher, was 47 years of age and had four children.  He was a native of El Salvador, the Central American republic.  A funeral mass was held at St. Teresa’s Roman Catholic Church in Summit a day or two ago.
Two of the boys who committed the murder were students at the Summit High School while another one attended Morristown High School in a town nearby.  Very little is said about the fourth person, who is underage.  So there are the facts as we know them at this time.  At the moment, the story has caught the interest of the local newspapers.  So Mr. Mazariego has been properly blessed and a Mass was said for him.  At his family’s request, he is being returned to his native El Salvador.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on these matters, but I assume that Mr. Mazariego represented a target of opportunity for the three teen-agers and that he was killed for the fun of it.  Whether they intended to kill him or not is beside the point.  Clearly, they intended to cause harm to him.
This story caused me at least three sleepless nights because Mr. Mazariego is the kind of person with whom I identify.  When I was involved with labor union matters with the AT&T Company and with the New York Telephone Company, the fact that a man was trying to work himself up from the bottom always interested me and gained my sympathy.  In this case, Mazariego was working himself up from below the bottom, coming from El Salvador and washing dishes for 11 years at the Dabbawalla Restaurant.
I say that this was a “fun” killing by the three teen-agers because Summit, New Jersey is an affluent town where something in excess of 95% of the children graduating from high school go on to college.  It would be very difficult to argue that they targeted Mazariego because he was taking a job away from them.  Kids who attend Summit High School are not there to train as dishwashers.  I would suspect that most of them have their eye on a management job that will pay a substantial amount of salary.
Abelino Mazariego was doing the very best he could to support his family.  Apparently he was a hard worker, having worked at that restaurant for 11 years.  In the end, aged 47, he was beaten to death and eventually will be buried in his native El Salvador.  Few people know about the circumstances of his death but knowing what I know about it now, I am greatly disturbed by it.
In 1955, the AT&T Company decided that my talents were needed in New York City.  So my wife and one child moved from Chicago to the great metropolis on the East Coast.  We could not buy a house in Summit, New Jersey because houses were too expensive.  We wound up renting a farm.  The town that we located in was New Providence, which is the next town over from Summit.  It might be said that New Providence is a poor sister to Summit.  But we were very happy in New Providence.  But clearly those with more affluence settled in Summit rather than in New Providence.
And so at this juncture one man, Abelino, is dead, and the three teen-agers will in most likelihood have a conviction on their records.  An assault in New Jersey carries a sentence of ten years, while aggravated assault carries a sentence of up to 25 years.  I don’t pretend to be an expert on legal matters, but it seems to me that the three teen-agers clearly intended to beat Mr. Mazariego as a form of sport.  Stupidly, they filmed the beating and it was circulated among their cohorts.  I hope that the authorities in Summit are as disturbed about Mr. Mazariego’s death as I am.  He was my kind of guy.  He was hard-working.  He was willing to sweat out his time at the bottom of the economic ladder in order to provide for his wife and four children.  What more can you ask?
There really is no moral to this essay.  I recite it because it has been troubling to my mind for the past few days.  As I have said, nobody attending Summit High School trains to become a dishwasher at an Indian restaurant.  Mr. Mazariego was starting at the bottom of the economic pack and was killed while eating a piece of pizza.  I feel a little better for having recited the story of his death because, more than anything else, his life in New Jersey will have a very small amount of recognition.  I regret that I did not know Abelino Mazariego while he was alive.  But the very least I can do is to recognize his passing and express my profound sorrow to his family.
 
PS: Since this essay was dictated, there have been two or three significant developments.  St. Teresa’s Church has steep stone steps at least 15 or more in number.  When the hearse arrived at the church, the priest asked for volunteers to carry Abelino’s coffin into the church.  A Hassidic Jew stood up to volunteer, followed by a Korean who had ministerial ranking.  Soon they were followed by other men in work shirts rather than chief executives.  Abelino’s body was carried into the church and out of the church by men of his own class.  Those are my kind of guys.
It now turns out that when Abelino was still alive, he was taken to Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey.  His wallet contained his pay package of something on the order of $600.  His widow noted to the authorities that his pay was missing from his clothing.  As if Abelino had not suffered enough insults, his pay was stolen by a male nurse.  That nurse has been arrested.
One more development has to do with one of the attackers, who had been held on $100,000 bond.  He was released on Monday, July 26.  But there is also the report that the whole case is going to be referred to a grand jury.  It is at that proceeding that I hope his attackers are charged with more than simple manslaughter.  My hope is that they will be charged with attempted murder or at least aggravated manslaughter.
 
E. E. CARR
July 28, 2010
Essay 477
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Kevin’s commentary: This is incredibly sad. I’m sure this happens as a matter of regular course especially in large metropolises like New York or Chicago — dozens of people there are murdered every week — but it is much easier to hear a statistic like “there were twenty deaths this week” than it is to hear the story of what actually happened to each individual person. This story reminds me a bit of a despicable activity that some of my classmates at the esteemed Westlake high school in Austin used to take part in — it was called hobo hunting and participants would either throw change at homeless people or in some cases shoot them with paintballs or airsoft pellets. The most privileged people in the world preying on the most desperate for sport. There is a sense of entitlement here with this murder that is just heart wrenching. I have not had time to research the outcome of the case further at this time but I hope justice was served, though honestly prison sentences can never really compete with a family of four who no longer has a father.
This essay was upsetting, but I’m glad I read it.  The follow up will be published next.