Gilroy
– Former Garlic Queen Franca Barsi is among the six people who
died a victim of domestic violence in Santa Clara County in 2006.
And while the numbers are less than the 10 victims in 2005,
”
one death is one too many,
”
said Perla Flores, Community Solutions’ director of the
Solutions to Violence Program.
Gilroy – Former Garlic Queen Franca Barsi is among the six people who died a victim of domestic violence in Santa Clara County in 2006. And while the numbers are less than the 10 victims in 2005, “one death is one too many,” said Perla Flores, Community Solutions’ director of the Solutions to Violence Program.
“This is not just a statistic we’re talking about, this is a human being who has a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, children who will have to live without them now,” Flores said. “In order for us to eradicate these kinds of deaths, we have to do something about promoting and preserving the basic human rights of women.”
Barsi, the 38-year-old single mother was in the news again Wednesday, when county officials released data showing she was one of five homicides included in the deaths reported in the 2006 Domestic Violence Death Review Report. The sixth death was a suicide.
Barsi was found dead in her Gilroy Westwood Drive condominium Sept. 13 by Gilroy police. She met 39-year-old David Vincent Reyes of Gilroy, in the check-out line at PW Supermarket, where she worked as a cashier. Reyes had recently been released from prison and is charged with her death.
Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney Rolanda Pierre-Dixon said the team releases the report on Valentine’s Day every year because the holiday is “supposed to be about love, but we want to draw attention to those relationships that are in trouble, are dangerous, are life-threatening.”
The report compiled by the review team, which meets monthly to discuss any death related to domestic violence, states that the average age of the female homicide victims was 27; the only male homicide victim was 51. Three of the murdered people were Hispanic, two were white, and one was Hispanic/Asian.
One of the murder victims had attended college, while three had finished high school. Five children were present at the time of death of either one or both parents; seven children lost one or both parents to death or incarceration.
Two of the deaths came in the same case, when a boyfriend killed his girlfriend and then himself. One of the victims was killed when his girlfriend’s previous boyfriend found out they were dating. Another victim was killed by her live-in boyfriend who found out she was planning to move out. One victim was killed after breaking off a dating relationship. The sixth victim was a 2-year-old girl who was killed by her father when he was angry because her mother was leaving him.
“People don’t believe it, but it can happen to anyone, even someone who seems to have it all,” she said. “Don’t you believe that it’s only happening to women of color, to Hispanic women, to poor women.”
Pierre-Dixon said attitudes that men have the right to “keep women in line,” or that when people see or hear of abuse, it is “none of their business,” need to change.
Barsi’s death came after abuse that she kept mostly to herself during their on-again, off-again relationship, according to Barsi’s close friend Belinda Pratt-Garcia.
Talking about the dangerous side of Barsi’s relationship with her batterer and eventual killer, Pratt-Garcia said, “It started off as mental, but she did tell me one incident where he was physical. They would get into a very heated argument, and he would begin to throw things around her and break things around her. I believe he pushed her, but she didn’t go into any details. She would say he’s not like this all the time. She said, ‘He promised me he wasn’t going to hurt me again.’ I told her not to let him back into her life.”
To stop this kind of violence, people need to speak out: “Speak Up-Save Lives” is the team’s motto, Pierre-Dixon said.
She recalled a particular case where a woman was being savagely beaten in a Safeway parking lot. No one did anything, she said, until the man yanked the woman’s puppy from the car and threw it on the ground. Â
“Then they got involved; we have to get to the place where that woman’s life is as important as her puppy’s,” she said.
