Community rallies around family of slain soldier

ALTON — A long line of somber faces snaked around Magdalena Espinoza’s tiny front lawn, each person waiting their turn to embrace the bleary-eyed woman and offer what little comfort they could.

Espinoza and her children sat quietly on a row of folding chairs as the procession moved before them. Some whispered words of encouragement into the woman’s ear as they cradled her in their arms. Others just cried.

As many as a hundred people gathered in front of the family’s trailer home Saturday evening for a flag-raising ceremony to honor 26-year-old Staff Sgt. Bradley Espinoza, a soldier who died in Iraq on Monday after enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised bomb.

The Mission High School graduate was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division based in Fort Hood. He entered the U.S. Army in July 2002 as a combat engineer and has been stationed at Fort Hood since November 2002, according to a statement from Fort Hood.

Relatives of Alex Gonzalez, a Mission soldier who died last year in Iraq, came to the event hoping to give solace to the family of another fallen soldier. The Gonzalezes wore black T-shirts with a printed image of Alex, who died from injuries sustained when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his armored personnel carrier.

“We wanted to pay our respects,” said Norma Garza, Gonzalez’s aunt. “We’ve been through it. We know how hard it’s been.”

Garza had just hugged Magdalena Espinoza, urging her to be strong and endure her son’s loss.

“It’s worse at night,” Garza said, softly shaking her head. “When you’re alone, it hits you.”

Even neighbors who barely knew the bereaved mother attended the event, some shedding a few tears for the young man and his grieving family.

“I don’t know her well, but she’s very nice,” Maria Garcia, 39, said in Spanish. “She’s just devastated.”

Friends and relatives of the fallen soldier shied from media attention at Saturday’s event, several declining Monitor interview requests. But as the evening drew to a close, Magdalena Espinoza was slowly guided by her family toward media cameras, stopping frequently to shut her eyes and lean on relatives.

“Somebody, help me,” she seemed to mouth, reaching at her side with trembling hands. The woman’s unfinished sentences trailed away at first, but she eventually thanked the crowd for their support as they formed a circle around her.

“It was very important for me that everybody be here,” she said. “When (Bradley) became a soldier, he became everyone’s soldier.”

The woman remembered her son — a married father of two young children — as a kind person who “always found a way to make you smile,” and she asked the community not to forget the young man.

“I haven’t done this before, but it was hard,” she said as she looked toward the cameras. “I love you, Bradley. I will always miss you.”

Espinoza’s stepfather, Miguel de Leon, said the family had previously declined interviews because relatives wished for the community to focus on Bradley’s death, not on their grief.

“He died doing what he wanted to do,” de Leon said in Spanish. “We don’t want anything. We just want people to remember him.”

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Ana Ley covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4428.