Well, let me tell you ’bout this Angie Zapata thing. It ain’t pretty, mind you. This girl, Angie, she was just a young thing, barely 18, when somethin’ awful happened to her.
Angie Zapata, born August 5, 1989, didn’t get to see much of life. July 17, 2008, that’s when it all ended. In Greeley, Colorado, of all places. Folks say she was beat to death. Beat to death! Can ya imagine? Just a young girl, and someone done beat her ’til she was gone.
Now, they caught the fella who did it. Allen Andrade, that’s his name. They say he was 31 when they arrested him, but some papers say 32 when they found him guilty. Don’t matter much now, I guess. He’s the one did it. They charged him with murder, and somethin’ they call a “hate crime.”
- Hate crime, they say. Means he did it ’cause of who she was, I reckon.
- Don’t make no sense to me, killin’ someone just ’cause they different.
They say Andrade and Angie, they went out on a date. Can you believe that? A date! And then he ends up killin’ her? Makes you shiver, it does. Makes you wonder what kind of devil gets into folks.
The police, they got him a few days later. Found him in Angie’s car, they did. Imagine that, sittin’ in the car of the girl you just killed. Cold-blooded, that’s what it is.
Then came the trial. Started April 14, 2009, in Greeley. Took ’em two weeks, they say. Two weeks of talkin’ and arguin’ and tryin’ to figure out what happened. Like we didn’t already know. He killed her, plain and simple.
The jury, they didn’t take long. Two hours, that’s all. Two hours to decide that Andrade was guilty. Guilty of murder, the worst kind, and guilty of that hate crime thing. First-degree murder, they called it. Means he planned it, I guess. Means he meant to kill that poor girl.
It’s a sad story, it is. A young life cut short, for no good reason. Angie Zapata, she shoulda had a whole life ahead of her. She shoulda had a chance to grow old, to find love, to maybe have kids of her own. But that Andrade fella, he took it all away.
Makes you think, don’t it? Makes you think about the hate in this world. Makes you wonder why some folks can be so cruel. And it makes you pray that nothin’ like this ever happens again. But it does, don’t it? It happens too darn often.
I don’t know much about this “transgender” stuff, they say Angie was. But I know what’s right and what’s wrong. And killin’ someone, that’s just plain wrong. No matter who they are or what they do. Angie Zapata didn’t deserve what happened to her. No one does.
And that Andrade fella, he got what he deserved. Locked up, where he belongs. But it don’t bring Angie back, does it? It don’t fix nothin’. It just leaves a hole in the world where she used to be. A hole that’ll never be filled. Greeley, Colorado, will never forget this thing, I tell ya. Never forget what happened to that girl, just two weeks shy of her 19th birthday. Killed in the summer, just like that.
So that’s the story of Angie Zapata, as best as I can tell it. A sad story, a terrible story. But a story that needs to be told. A story that we need to remember. So that maybe, just maybe, we can learn somethin’ from it. So that maybe, we can do better.
I still don’t understand why they have to give it fancy names like “transgender murder”. Murder is murder, plain and simple. A life taken is a life taken, no matter who they are. It’s just terrible. And that’s the truth, plain and simple.
