“It seems like it just happened. Every year, you wish it didn't happen, but it did happen,” Abby Garcia says of her youngest son having been murdered.
January 21st marked seven years since Saul Garcia was killed in the back of a vehicle in Sparks. While the case remains unsolved, the Facebook page Justice for Saul-Toast-Garcia remains active.
“I posted something on Facebook and some of his friends posted on there, you know, that he would never be forgotten,” Abby said. “They put pictures of him that they had, and, I just go back and I tell them, ‘thank you for remembering and thank you for sharing.’”
The family lit a candle at the Sparks Marina where there’s a plaque with a bike honoring his life. It’s a good spot for the family to remember him, as he would always go cruising there on his bike with a speaker connected, playing the music he loved, getting smiles from those he passed.
His birthday on August 16th is just as difficult for Abby and the rest of the family, as is Thanksgiving which was Saul’s favorite holiday. “We do something at the house for him, but it's just too hard,” she said. “I know it's been seven years, but it's just too hard still. It’s hard to talk about it. I have pictures of him on the wall but sometimes I can't look at them.”
Saul, the youngest of five siblings, named after an uncle from Mexico, was killed in the early morning hours of Jan 21, 2017, and found by Sparks police in the back of a vehicle on the 2600 block of Cygnet Circle. That same early morning Edgar Rodriguez was found shot dead in the area of McCarran Boulevard and Sutro Street.
Police say Rodriguez had left a party in a vehicle with several other people. Both of the young men were 19 when they were killed.
Very little information came out in the media, and Abby has grown increasingly frustrated with the local investigation.
“I don't see them doing anything anymore about it,” she says. “I just gave up on texting the detective because he never would text me back. I would text him like once a month and say, ‘Hey, you know what? This is his mom, I want to know what's going on with the case.’ And I wouldn't hear back from him anymore.”
She would like to know where the case stands.
“If they did give up, I mean, they need to let me know what's going on. They need to tell me, ‘okay, you know what, we're not getting any more leads. Nothing's going on. We're gonna close the case now.’ But no one contacted me at all. Nobody. “
Abby says her family and friends believe they know who the killer is in her son’s murder but that everyone who could help with the investigation is afraid to come forward.
“They don't want the same thing to happen to them or anything to their family,” she said. “They're just all too scared to come forward. I do wish that somebody eventually will come forward”
Abby also wishes police were more communicative. “They said that Saul was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what they said. And the gang unit was called but he wasn't a gang banger or anything. He just liked to go out and have fun. It'd be nice to have somebody that really did care, but they don’t,” she said.
Saul had had trouble with his schooling, struggling with ADHD, but he was doing well, she says, working at a roofing company, getting his life sorted out, when it was abruptly ended.
“Deep down in my heart, I know that it's going to stay unsolved,” she added. “You know? I know it's never going to get solved. It's just something that I feel. I just feel it in my heart that no one's ever, ever going to come forward.”
After his death, a GoFundMe for Saul got 30 donations but only received $1,600 out of a $15,000 goal. Others told Abby, who works in a warehouse, to hire a private detective but she says she doesn’t have the money for that. A GoFundMe previously set up for Rodriguez is no longer up.
“Everybody needs justice for their children, you know, but some will get it and some won’t,” Abby says, with tears swelling up. She feels racism plays a part in whether or not certain cases get looked into seriously.
“A lot of people say, like, they'll try to say, ‘get over it. It's over and done with,’ but you never get over it. You know, you never get over it,” she says. “There's nothing anybody can say or do. You know, you as a person just have to go through it yourself. I have to go through it by myself. My kids gotta go through it. They're going to go through it their way. Like I'm going through it my way. But there isn't anything really that anybody can say or do.”
Her other kids still live in the area, and she says they are what keep her going.
They all miss Saul’s humor. “He was a funny person. He would tell jokes and he was just a funny person. He was always there for his friends. Whenever some of his friends needed a ride, he would always tell me, ‘Mom, can I use a car? Mom, can I use a truck?’”
His dream was to buy a nice car and go low riding, so now one of his brothers, Gerardo, has been working on tailoring one in Saul’s memory, even displaying it at car shows, like the one above in Las Vegas several years ago.
“It’s hard for us still to talk about it because we just start crying. I mean, I know it's been seven years, but it's still hard,” she said at the conclusion of our interview. “I remember the day, I remember what happened and it's just like, I don’t know, it’s hard. “
Reno Police Detectives can be reached at 334-2188 and Sparks Police Department Division at 353-2225. Anonymous tips can be submitted through Secret Witness at 322-4900, www.secretwitness.com or text the tip to 847411 (TIP 411) keyword – SW.