This happened in my city.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
By Erin Quinn
Tribune-Herald staff writer
<!--endtext--><!--begintext--> Surrounded by teddy bears and colorful balloons, 5-year-old Eilene Rivera spent Wednesday in her hospital bed watching The Little Mermaid, sipping Dr Pepper and wearing a plastic princess tiara, visitors said.
Although still visibly weak, the raven-haired Kendrick Elementary School kindergartner appeared to be recovering, visitors said, the day after being moved to a hospital room from the intensive care unit and just two days after being stabbed in the chest 10 times by a stranger while at the laundromat with her mother.
“She looked healthy,” said Abigail Jones, 19, who visited Eilene with her father, Greg Jones, owner of Sanger Avenue Laundry Superstore, and her friend Dannielle Jones, 18. “She was very quiet, but she had these big, beautiful brown eyes. She was just perfect.”
She’s also lucky.
Doctors told her family Monday that she had a 50/50 chance of surviving the stab wounds, said Greg Jones, who has talked with Eilene’s family every day. Since then, Eilene has endured surgery to her chest and could be out of the hospital within a few days, Jones said.
Her mother, who speaks only Spanish, talked Tuesday of how Eilene loves to draw and run and is excited about learning to read, Jones said.
“I just kept thinking, ‘How could anyone see this beautiful little girl and do something so horrible to her?’ ” Dannielle Jones said.
The father of Michael Moorman, the 21-year-old who sits in McLennan County Jail in connection with the stabbing, described his son Tuesday as mentally ill.
“He was just bounced from foster home to foster home,” said Moorman’s father, who declined to be named. “His mother pretty much abandoned him. If I would’ve known he was this bad off, I would’ve helped him. He masked all of his feelings.”
Moorman was estranged from his father for most of his life and only recently started living with him in Waco.
His father declined to release much information about his son.
“Everybody who meets him says how he’s just the nicest, most polite person,” his father said. “He’s a little shy and reserved but very respectful to people.”
Moorman’s father said he picked his son up from work Monday night and dropped him off at the Sanger Avenue Laundry Superstore.
“He was in a good mood,” said his father, declining to name his son’s place of work. “Then I showed up to pick him up, and all that was left was his laundry.”
What Waco police say happened during those couple of hours at the laundromat shocked Moorman’s father Tuesday.
Witnesses say Moorman, for no apparent reason, walked into the laundromat’s one-room women’s restroom and stabbed Eilene, who was in the room by herself.
Moorman then took the ice pick he used to stab her and turned it on himself, piercing himself in the chest 11 times, police say.
A woman doing her laundry said she rushed at Moorman and held onto his wrists to keep him from stabbing himself further.
He was treated for his wounds at the hospital and was taken to jail the next day. He is charged with attempted capital murder.
He has attempted suicide twice before, Moorman’s father said, adding that his son had no criminal record.
“I hope the state realizes he’s not right and treats him more like a mental patient than a criminal,” his father said.
In that sunny hospital room Wednesday afternoon, there was no talk of Moorman, Greg Jones said.
Only of little Eilene.
And if healing somehow goes faster wearing a plastic princess tiara, so be it.
By Erin Quinn
Tribune-Herald staff writer
<!--endtext--><!--begintext--> Surrounded by teddy bears and colorful balloons, 5-year-old Eilene Rivera spent Wednesday in her hospital bed watching The Little Mermaid, sipping Dr Pepper and wearing a plastic princess tiara, visitors said.
Although still visibly weak, the raven-haired Kendrick Elementary School kindergartner appeared to be recovering, visitors said, the day after being moved to a hospital room from the intensive care unit and just two days after being stabbed in the chest 10 times by a stranger while at the laundromat with her mother.
“She looked healthy,” said Abigail Jones, 19, who visited Eilene with her father, Greg Jones, owner of Sanger Avenue Laundry Superstore, and her friend Dannielle Jones, 18. “She was very quiet, but she had these big, beautiful brown eyes. She was just perfect.”
She’s also lucky.
Doctors told her family Monday that she had a 50/50 chance of surviving the stab wounds, said Greg Jones, who has talked with Eilene’s family every day. Since then, Eilene has endured surgery to her chest and could be out of the hospital within a few days, Jones said.
Her mother, who speaks only Spanish, talked Tuesday of how Eilene loves to draw and run and is excited about learning to read, Jones said.
“I just kept thinking, ‘How could anyone see this beautiful little girl and do something so horrible to her?’ ” Dannielle Jones said.
The father of Michael Moorman, the 21-year-old who sits in McLennan County Jail in connection with the stabbing, described his son Tuesday as mentally ill.
“He was just bounced from foster home to foster home,” said Moorman’s father, who declined to be named. “His mother pretty much abandoned him. If I would’ve known he was this bad off, I would’ve helped him. He masked all of his feelings.”
Moorman was estranged from his father for most of his life and only recently started living with him in Waco.
His father declined to release much information about his son.
“Everybody who meets him says how he’s just the nicest, most polite person,” his father said. “He’s a little shy and reserved but very respectful to people.”
Moorman’s father said he picked his son up from work Monday night and dropped him off at the Sanger Avenue Laundry Superstore.
“He was in a good mood,” said his father, declining to name his son’s place of work. “Then I showed up to pick him up, and all that was left was his laundry.”
What Waco police say happened during those couple of hours at the laundromat shocked Moorman’s father Tuesday.
Witnesses say Moorman, for no apparent reason, walked into the laundromat’s one-room women’s restroom and stabbed Eilene, who was in the room by herself.
Moorman then took the ice pick he used to stab her and turned it on himself, piercing himself in the chest 11 times, police say.
A woman doing her laundry said she rushed at Moorman and held onto his wrists to keep him from stabbing himself further.
He was treated for his wounds at the hospital and was taken to jail the next day. He is charged with attempted capital murder.
He has attempted suicide twice before, Moorman’s father said, adding that his son had no criminal record.
“I hope the state realizes he’s not right and treats him more like a mental patient than a criminal,” his father said.
In that sunny hospital room Wednesday afternoon, there was no talk of Moorman, Greg Jones said.
Only of little Eilene.
And if healing somehow goes faster wearing a plastic princess tiara, so be it.