Mendota needs time to heal after death

Published online on Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009

Mendota High was piling up touchdowns in Avenal on Friday night when the first text messages arrived.

A 4-year-old was missing back home.

As much as they love their high school and their football team, many Aztecs fans immediately returned home -- some 60 miles away -- to search for Alex Christopher Mercado.

"The game didn't mean anything anymore," says Joseph Riofrio, a Mendota City Council member. "We had to go find this child."

At times, it seemed as if the whole town were involved. People grabbed flashlights and took off looking. Others brought food and water for the searchers.

You might know Mendota only as the western Fresno County farm town rocked by the drought and California's water wars. News the last few years has been particularly grim: closed packinghouses, idle land, lost jobs, long food lines.

But, it's a proud, tight-knit place where people care about each other. And, on this night and into the next morning, residents had a mission -- find the missing child with the big smile.

Alex was found.

Dead.

His body in a dryer.

A 14-year-old neighbor, Raul Renato Castro, was arrested, dealing Mendota a new challenge. The town had experienced tragedy and murder before, but this was different. Castro's mother, Elsa, and other family members are well-liked, says Cora Martinez of Mendota Youth Recreation, Inc.

"It's like there is a cloud," Martinez says. "Everybody is feeling down."

The cloud got even thicker Wednesday when a court affidavit revealed that Castro confessed to killing Alex because the child was going to tell his mother that the teen had molested him.

Details obtained by detectives during the confession were gut-wrenching: Castro sodomized the child. He held him under water and got into the tub to finish the murder. Then he checked Alex's pulse to make sure that he was dead.

"Everything else that has happened here pales in comparison because of the nature of what was done to him," says Riofrio, 47, who has lived in Mendota all of his life. "The sexual assault, the raping, the sodomy. It's like sticking a dagger in somebody's heart. The whole town is ailing, and it's going to be affected for a while."

Martinez, who manages an apartment complex, has seen the change. She says that parents stick to their children when they play outside. Moms and dads are walking kids to school.

"There's just this fear," she says.

And anger over a horrific crime. Riofrio says that while residents are "disgusted" by Alex's murder, he hopes that people will reach out and comfort the families of the victim and the accused.

"As more specific facts are known -- and people have the right to know them -- it's going to get even tougher," he says. "We're going to have to endure that."