GILROY
– Threatening letters, laced with derogatory expletives and
ending with,
”
Next year, I hope your house burns down with you in it
”
have been sent to three Gilroy women and a 14-year-old girl who
have advocated banning fireworks in Gilroy.
GILROY – Threatening letters, laced with derogatory expletives and ending with, “Next year, I hope your house burns down with you in it” have been sent to three Gilroy women and a 14-year-old girl who have advocated banning fireworks in Gilroy.
In the letters, sent anonymously and postmarked in San Jose, the words “with you in it” are underlined.
Petra Castaneda and her 14-year-old daughter Elena, who witnessed their neighbor’s home burn down on July 4, contacted police after receiving the letter. At least two other women have received the letter and also plan to contact authorities.
“We’re on alert now. We have a sort of neighborhood watch going, and we’re taking license plate numbers down when an unfamiliar car comes down the street,” said Daniel Pina, a Castaneda relative who shares the family’s El Toro Way home.
Pina’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law received one of the letters after the teen-ager was quoted in a Dispatch article as being in support of a fireworks ban. The family is the neighbor of El Toro Way residents Jess and Dolores Perez whose home burned July 4 when an illegal firework landed on the roof.
“They were scared when they got the letter,” Pina said. “They were like ‘What’s going to happen?’ We don’t know who the person is.”
Other letter recipients had similar reactions.
“This scared the daylights out of me,” said a woman who would only speak on the condition of anonymity. “It’s so contradictory to write a letter about your freedom to shoot off fireworks, but then try to invade my freedom and sense of security. How dare you?”
The community debate over fireworks has heated up in Gilroy since the fire department’s frenzied response to events on the Fourth of July. Two structure fires, seven vegetation fires, a fatal car accident and other emergencies directly or indirectly related to fireworks happened between 1 p.m. and midnight during the festive holiday.
There was $300,000 in fire damage to the burned homes and in one of the cases legal fireworks was the cause.
Gilroy is the only city in Santa Clara County where fireworks are legal, but some community leaders, including the Gilroy Fire Department, are pushing for that to end in light of this year’s tragedies.
Councilman Bob Dillon brought the subject of a fireworks ban to the forefront when he asked fellow City Councilmembers to consider an all-out ban. Since then, Fire Chief Jeff Clet has publicly supported a fireworks ban.
Dillon and Clet did not receive the anonymous handwritten note, but soon after making their comments they and other City Council members received a pro-fireworks e-mail from Gilroy resident Alan Viarengo that included derogatory nuances.
Clet described the document, which was e-mailed and hand delivered to the chief at the fire station, as an “aggressive” and “condescending” letter that “used profanity.”
The Viarengo letter posed a similar question as the anonymous note regarding what the person does for fun on the Fourth of July. Both questions end with explicit language and imply the recipient would rather hide in fear than have fun on July 4.
Viarengo’s letter says, “What do you do on the Fourth of July, anyway, sit and circle jerk with the other control freaks, or cower in your bedrooms, while the rest of us have fun?”
The anonymous note reads, “What do you do while the rest of us are having block parties, tremble in fear in your closet? Shove a corn cob up your a–?”
Viarengo said he did not write the anonymous handwritten letter. In a telephone interview he called the content of the letter, which was described to him by a Dispatch reporter, as “disturbing.”
“I have no problem with people who speak their opinion about illegal fireworks,” Viarengo said. “When I write something, I put my name on it.”
Viarengo said he has been out of town for several days hunting buffalo with his wife in South Dakota.
In his letter to The Dispatch, Viarengo writes about the futility of establishing a hotline to stop him from using illegal fireworks. During the telephone interview, however, Viarengo said the only illegal fireworks he has ever used are firecrackers.
The letter was an over-exaggeration, Viarengo says, done in jest because The Dispatch was not printing his letters to the editor.
Viarengo’s letter to The Dispatch does not use the sentence about a house burning down with someone in it. Also unlike Viarengo’s letter, the anonymous note tells the victims to leave Gilroy and move to Morgan Hill (where all fireworks are illegal).
Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Mark Hood says the letter writer’s words fall under the umbrella of free speech. Under California law, a threat is punishable only when an outside party believes the action can be carried out immediately and the recipient fears for their safety.
“It requires real serious words to go beyond free speech,” Hood said. “When you break down these words (in the letter), the writer may be implying them as a threat, but the writer uses the words ‘next year’ and ‘hope’ and that would probably not be interpreted as an immediate threat.”
Still, Gilroy police are encouraging any victim to formally report the incidents.
If the letter recipients have a reasonable idea who may have sent the slur-filled, eight-sentence document, Gilroy police would put the individual on notice that detectives would be looking his or her way if the victims were ever harmed.
Consideration of a fireworks ban continues to move forward slowly.
Fire department officials plan to show City Council a July 4 videotape recording from a camera located on a hill above Gilroy. It shows the massive amount of fireworks lit that night and viewers can see firefighters working to save the Perez home as bottle rockets fly overhead.
Anyone receiving threatening letters is encouraged to contact the Gilroy Police at 846-0350.
