LIVING WITH KILLING: Ex-cop never had fired at anyone, but this time, she says she had to
December 16, 2003
BY CECIL ANGEL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Adela Rivera never fired her gun at anyone in 20 years as a Detroit police officer.
Now a Detroit bar owner, she fired it recently. Once. The single bullet killed two men, who police say were attempting to run over her manager after they had been assaulting and robbing customers in the bar's parking lot.
The shooting has left a number of people reeling. Rivera says she is depressed that she took the lives of two people. And the men's families are asking why Rivera has been cleared by prosecutors and police.
"I never thought I'd . . . I would kill two people," said Rivera, 49. "It was a tragedy. It was a terrible tragedy, and I'm sorry it happened."
Barbara Gordillo, the sister-in-law of one of the men said: "How could she just kill two people and get away with it? I think the cops covered for her. I really do believe it."
Rivera owns Adela's Place, a neighborhood bar she opened six years ago on a lonely stretch of Fort Street in southwest Detroit, where on Nov. 1 she had the fatal encounter withDorian Gordillo, 22, and Rosalio Becerra-Santoyo, 31, both of Detroit.
The following is according to Rivera and police:
It started out like any other Saturday night.
Adela's Place is a former country-and-Western bar that caters mostly to Mexican immigrants. Patrons danced to the house band, Fantasia, under dimmed lights. Rivera worked the door, checking IDs.
Suddenly, a man, who looked injured, ran past Rivera and straight to Salvador Cuevo, the manager, who was behind the bar.
"Salvador comes and grabs me at the door and says they're robbing customers outside, let's go," Rivera recalled.
As Rivera and Cuevo rushed out, a second customer ran past them.
Detroit police homicide investigator Barbara Higgins said one of the victims said Gordillo and Becerra-Santoyo were sitting in Gordillo's black Dodge Neon, claiming they needed help with a flat tire.
When the man approached, Gordillo and Becerra-Santoyo left the car, grabbed the man by the neck and hit him in the back of the head with a beer bottle. They both demanded money.
Upon seeing Rivera and Cuevo, Gordillo and Becerra-Santoyo jumped back into the car, which was pointed toward the parking lot gate.
"I'm trying to pull the driver out of the car, and I saw Salvador on the passenger side, and then I saw him run to the front of the car," Rivera said.
She pulled out a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson that was tucked in her waistband.
Cuevo was standing 10 feet in front of the car, trying to get the remote control to close the gate.
Rivera noticed Gordillo had put the car in drive and, she said, stepped on the gas.
"All of a sudden, the car just went, and there was no place for Salvador to go," Rivera said.
She fired her gun. Just once.
The bullet entered the left side of Gordillo's neck, just below his ear, according to the Wayne County medical examiner. It punctured his throat, exited the right side of his jaw and slammed into the left side of Becerra-Santoyo's chest, near the nipple.
The wounded Gordillo kept driving. He missed Cuevo by 2 feet as he sped through the gate, which had closed only halfway.
The car was found about 2:30 a.m. Nov. 2 by an off-duty Detroit police officer at McKinstry and the I-75 service drive, about four blocks away. The driver was slumped over the wheel, his door open and one foot sticking out. The passenger was sitting upright with a bottle of Bud Light in his hand. Both men were dead.
According to autopsy reports, Gordillo and Becerra-Santoyo had been drinking. Gordillo's blood-alcohol level was 0.14, and Becerra-Santoyo's was 0.20. In Michigan, 0.08 is the blood alcohol level at which someone can be convicted of drunken driving.
Both tested negative for drugs.
Cleared but not forgotten
The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office determined the shooting was justified.
The key evidence was a videotape from a security camera that supported what Rivera and witnesses told police.
Higgins, the police investigator, said she explained to the families of the dead men that "you have a legal right to defend your life or that of another."
Despite being cleared, Rivera has mixed emotions.
"If I thought I did something wrong, I might feel worse. But in my heart, I know that I did what I had to do," she said.
She would like to meet with the men's families to talk with them about the shooting.
Rivera wants the families to understand the kind of person she is, she said, such as that she runs her bar like a home-away-from-home for her customers.
On Sept. 16, Rivera hurried from her bar to help the driver three young men had saved from his burning tanker on I-75. Rivera made sure EMS was on the way, and she called the driver's wife.
One of 15 children of a Puerto Rican father and a French mother, Rivera has lived in southwest Detroit since she was a child. She dropped out of the University of Michigan in 1977 after her mother died so she could support her family. She joined the force that same year. Eventually, she graduated from U-M in 1990 with a degree in social psychology. Among her jobs as a cop were 10 years on Mayor
"Coleman Young's security squad. The families still are searching for answers.
What puzzles them most is how anyone could say their loved ones were robbing people. They didn't have any money on them when their bodies were found. Detroit police said the men did not have criminal records in the United States.
"They said she has a video. Let me see the video," Barbara Gordillo said. "We asked several times to see the video."
The videotape is considered evidence and is not available to the public because no charges have been filed.
The men, who family members described as best buddies, were buried in their hometown of Leon Guanajuato in northern Mexico after funerals in Detroit.
Dorian Gordillo was the youngest of 11 children, who are split between Mexico and Detroit. He had been in the United States for five years, all of them in Detroit. He worked in a factory that made auto parts and loved to spend time listening to Chalio Sanchez and other Mexican singers, said Barbara Gordillo.
"He was a good guy -- always stayed to himself. Very quiet," she said.
Juan Becerra, 26, said his brother was married and had two children, a 5-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. He had been in Detroit for four years and worked for a contractor fixing up houses.
Barbara Gordillo said she's hired a lawyer to help her family get access to the videotape, which remains in police custody. If the family views the tape, "then we will understand. Then I will know what really happened," she said.
"Show me that he was doing something wrong so I can feel better," she said.
Said Rivera: "I just keep telling myself I didn't have a choice. It was either they were going to kill Salvador or I had to stop them. I think if everybody saw the tape, they would understand."
Contact CECIL ANGEL at 313-223-4531 or
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No criminal record in the US doesn't sound like the strongest character reference you could have. And it's too bad a gun was present, otherwise these fine young lads would have been able to ply their trade uninterrupted. Although their car may have needed a wheel alignment after running over Mr. Cuevo. Alas.
