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Vanessa Guillen’s murder is a misogynist atrocity yet wholly banal. In Long Beach, California, a “popular” high school Spanish teacher, Pedro Tepoz-Leon, murdered his student, Mayra Mora-Lopez, an undocumented student at Wilson High School.
LBSUD hired the murderer *knowing* that he had beaten and strangled a former girlfriend. How did LBSUD know? HE DESCRIBED THE ASSAULT DURING HIS INTERVIEW.
Here a several excerpts from an article pub’d by the LA Times detailing the event. I’m shining this spotlight on Mayra Mora’s murder because IT WAS PREVENTABLE but those who could have helped her behaved as if her violent death was her destiny.
Black, Brown, and undocumented girls are treated as disposable by *all* of this country’s institutions. This is not unique to the military.
From the Los Angeles Times:
From the Los Angeles Times:
“Mora-Lopez was just 7 years old when Tepoz-Leon beat up his first girlfriend, Laura Hoffenberg, on June 15, 1990, in their Long Beach apartment. He described the beating in his application to become a teacher…”
“Police, court records and testimony show that he squeezed her throat until, she said, she thought she was dying and lost consciousness.”
"By 2002, Tepoz-Leon was a popular figure at Wilson [High School], teaching Spanish and coaching girls’ and boys’ soccer." The school placed Mora-Lopez in Tepoz-Leon’s classroom as his teacher’s aide. We can assume he groomed her for domestic violence within that context.
"Long Beach school officials, while calling the case heartbreaking, have broadly *defended* the hiring of Tepoz-Leon. The officials said applicants convicted of misdemeanors could be hired if the crimes had no bearing on their fitness to teach..."
"And so the girl who arrived from Tijuana with big dreams of becoming a teacher was killed by one, and was returned to her homeland in a pine burial box."
