by David R. Chase

Created on: December 26, 2007   Last Updated: September 29, 2010

Seven-year old Zoe Garcia's mother was working when her daughter was brutally murdered.

On December 6, 2007, the little girl had been left in the care of her sixteen-year old half sister, Heather Trujillo, and Trujillo's seventeen-year old boyfriend, Lamar Roberts. The two teens, according to their story, had decided to reenact fight scenes from the game "Mortal Kombat" with Zoe, and they say the "play fighting" simply got out of hand.

She had begged them to stop hurting her, said a witness. The witness had done nothing to help the little girl, claiming that he was too drunk to have been effective.

According to the autopsy, Zoe's tiny body was covered in bruises; she suffered a broken wrist, swelling in her brain, and bleeding in her neck muscles and under her delicate, growing spine.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense can tell you that a pair of teens using violent martial arts moves on a protesting seven-year old are a couple of sick, twisted sub-humans. Some people will blame the video game, that's for sure - but where the real blame lies is with the two teens who were supposed to be taking care of the little girl.

Both Trujillo and Roberts have admitted to committing abusive atrocities; unfortunately, those atrocities led to the death of an innocent child. They did things to that little girl that would incapacitate a grown man, and that sickening specimen Roberts bragged to a friend that his hands were "lethal weapons." They sure were.

Trujillo and Roberts are being tried as adults, as they should be. The two have each been charged with felony child abuse causing death, which (if convicted) carries a 16- to 48-year prison sentence.

48 years? That's ALL? Zoe only got seven years; now she'll be gone forever. Forever is a long time compared to a measly 48-year prison sentence. Seven short years to live - and according to other reports, those seven years were filled with abuse, neglect, and terror. The maximum sentence that the two can receive seems like nothing when every day for that little girl must have seemed like an eternity.

Although the two perpetrators are now in jail (each is being held by a $100,000 bond), they're segregated from the rest of the adult population in an attempt to protect them.

Protecting the criminal teens? Who was there to protect little Zoe? Neighbors claimed that she would come to their house on occasion asking for food; teachers reported - on five separate occasions - that they had found bruises on her body... but no one did

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