Antonio Zambrano Montes’ mother approached the blue casket – and fainted.
She hadn’t seen her son in 10 years, not since he’d left their tiny village in Mexico to pick apples in Washington state. And now Zambrano, 35, lay in a funeral home, the victim of a police shooting caught on video.
Agapita Montes Rivera, 60, was helped to a small chair in the next room. Her frequent sobs mixed into the beats of the Mexican folk ballads emanating from the funeral home speakers.
Dozens of loved ones came to pay their respects to Zambrano on Monday night, the first opportunity for his family to grieve after two weeks of marches and campaigns demanding justice for his death. A funeral Mass will be held Wednesday afternoon at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in this central Washington city, and his body will be returned to Mexico for burial.
Zambrano’s death – his shooting was witnessed Feb. 10 by an estimated 40 people in downtown Pasco – has left his family devastated and confused. His mother said it was painful to watch the video of her unarmed son collapsing on the sidewalk as three police officers fired at him from close range. She began to cry as she recalled him as a playful little boy with an easy smile.
“He was very happy,” she said. “He sang all the time, where ever he went.”
Much of Zambrano’s extended family has settled in this small agricultural community in the Columbia River basin. Ten years ago, Zambrano joined generations of family members who’d left their poor village in Mexico’s Michoacán state in search of a better life. Their village of La Parotita has just 18 homes, no public transportation and no drinking water.
“There is a joke that every year we meet a new relative,” said Delia Zambrano, 28, a cousin. “It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.”
Zambrano, or Toño, as loved ones called him, didn’t experience the “American dream.” He struggled. He made bad choices.
His wife filed a protection order in 2006 against and moved to California with their two daughters. She said he physically abused her, according to court documents. He lost his income after falling from a ladder and breaking both wrists. Just weeks ago, he had to be rescued from his home that caught on fire.
He fought bouts of depression. He felt terrible that he couldn’t send money back home to his mother and father in Mexico, cousins said.
But life had always been tough for a family that for years had to fetch water with mules. His brother, Temo, said Toño was strong and convinced he’d get back on his feet. He’d told his mother his hands would heal and he’d work again.
The broken wrists have made Temo doubt police accounts that Zamora was throwing softball-sized rocks just before they chased him across a busy street and shot him.
“He could barely move his fingers, let alone throw a big rock,” he said.
Rosa Cisneros Zambrano was one of the last to see Antonio Zambrano alive. Cisneros, 50, said she ran into her cousin three days before he died on a street near Pasco High School. She invited him for tea. After the house fire, she’d brought him some new clothes. Now she wanted to know how he was doing.
But he said he had other plans and couldn’t take the time. But he did say he was going back to work Feb. 20; the orchard had agreed to bring him back in a less demanding job. He felt his streak of bad luck may have been turning around.
Cisneros gave him a hug. He promised to come by soon for a proper visit.
“He said he was going home. But he can’t now,” she said.
The fatal Feb. 10 incident was not Zambrano’s first encounter with law enforcement.
He once tried to grab an officer’s gun from his belt while under the influence of methamphetamine. He was convicted of assault in 2014 after a confrontation with Pasco police, who tried to stop him from hitting cars with a broom, according to court documents.
On Feb. 10, police responded to a complaint of a man throwing rocks at cars. They confronted Zambrano and told him to stop. He didn’t. Instead, he threw rocks at the officers, hitting two. A stun gun failed to subdue him. He ran.
The 20-second video posted on YouTube shows officers chasing Zambrano across a busy intersection. Guns are drawn. Zambrano flails his arms. When he turns back toward the police, the officers shoot.
The three officers involved in the shooting have all been placed on paid leave as a special investigations teams from neighboring communities looks into the case.
A request to speak to the officers was referred to a national police union.
Jim Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, urged people not to jump to conclusions and let the investigation play out. He did not address specifics of the case but said he was confident the officers would be exonerated, provided they had followed their training.
But he said there was nothing more traumatic for any officer than to take another person’s life.
“This is not something that you get up in the morning planning to do,” he said.
Zambrano’s loved ones have called for the U.S. Justice Department to investigate.
“We want justice, that’s all we want,” said Zambrano’s sister, Elena Rosa Zambrano, 28.
The family has hired high-profile civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who also represented the families of Michael Brown, the teenager killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., last summer, and Trayvon Martin, shot to death in Florida by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.
On Monday, at the Pasco funeral home, loved ones shared the challenge of keeping a positive spirit about Zambrano’s memory. Delia Zambrano said the family has grown weary of responding to every criticism raised about Zambrano – his police record, his drug use. Instead, she said, his relatives are focusing on one another and sharing the good memories.
On Monday night, Delia Zambrano quietly approached her sobbing aunt, who was sitting under a gold-plated lamp. She kneeled and reached around her aunt’s petite shoulders.
“Mis condolencias,” she said, rubbing her aunt’s back. My condolences.
Montes pressed her face into her niece’s shoulder and sighed.