Healing process begins in beating fatality

HALLETTSVILLE – The healing process began in earnest Tuesday for the Yoakum man and his family at the center of a media and court-of-public-opinion firestorm stemming from the June 9 beating death of a Gonzales man who was allegedly sexually molesting a 5-year-old girl.

At a news conference Tuesday, 25th Judicial District Attorney Heather McMinn announced that a grand jury declined to press charges in the case that left Jesus Mora Flores, 47, of Gonzales, dead after he was caught allegedly assaulting the girl in a barn in rural Lavaca County.

“In our opinion, today the story is over,” said V’Anne Huser, the Shiner attorney who spoke for the family of the man who used deadly force in protecting his daughter. “By doing this today, they can start the healing process. You can only imagine, in the last week, we have been dealing with a lot of emotion.

“This has been a traumatic event, as you can imagine, in their lives,” she said. “We want you to be respectful of the fact that the child the father was defending is the victim of a sexual assault.

“You will not get an interview from (the father) or his family. They want to move on,” Huser said.

Huser said the family extended their gratitude to the Lavaca County Sheriff’s Office, the Texas Rangers and the emergency medical technicians who took care of the girl.

She also thanked McMinn for taking the case to the grand jury so quickly instead of waiting until the next regularly scheduled session on July 10.

According to McMinn, Texas law authorizes and justifies deadly force in order to stop aggravated sexual assault or a sexual assault.

During the news conference, McMinn said the father made a distraught 9-1-1 call after he beat the man. She also explained that the call was part of the “substantial amount of evidence” that convinced the grand jury not to indict the 23-year-old man.

“Under the law in Texas, deadly force is authorized and justified to stop an aggravated sexual assault or a sexual assault,” McMinn said. “All the evidence presented by the sheriff’s department and the Texas Rangers indicated that was in fact what was occurring when the victim’s father arrived at the scene.”

Although the father’s name was mentioned on the 9-1-1 tape, his name is not being released to protect his daughter’s identity because she is a sexual assault victim.

McMinn said the girl sustained physical injuries that were determined by the sexual assault nurse examiner to be “absolutely consistent with all of the witness statements.” She added that the girl is in good physical condition, but that she continues to deal with the emotional damage of the attack.

McMinn also said the man was not an acquaintance of the family.

During the 9-1-1 call, which went on for almost five minutes, the father had difficulty giving the dispatcher his exact location. He told her he needed an ambulance, and that the man he struck was dying.

At one point, the frustrated and crying father told the dispatcher that someone else on the scene was going to give the other man CPR, and that he was going to take Flores to the hospital himself.

“This guy is fixing to die on me, ma’am, and I don’t know what to do,” he pleaded.

The call ended abruptly after the father told the dispatcher, “The sheriff is here.”

The preliminary autopsy reports indicated Flores sustained numerous injuries to the head and neck area.

According to the Lavaca County Sheriff’s Office, the father and his family had gathered for a horse shoeing June 9 at their ranch, located off a country road between Yoakum and Shiner, where they keep their horses and chickens.

There were seven people at the ranch during the attack, including four members of the family, two acquaintances and a stranger, who was the alleged attacker. According to McMinn, the attacker was a legal worker who was originally from Mexico.

The child’s grandfather told the media that the girl had gone to the barn to feed the family’s chickens.

Lavaca County Sheriff Micah Harmon said the father suddenly heard screaming and ran in the direction of the noise. He then found the man sexually abusing his daughter, and struck him repeatedly in the head, killing him.

McMinn also said the child’s grandfather and aunt both administered CPR to Flores.