Series of tragic events has family, authorities reeling

FRESNO —  Lance Cpl. Robert Quiroz was in Kuwait about to deploy to Iraq last August when his wife and high school sweetheart, Candice, suffered a brain aneurism following the birth of their son, Roman.

He scrambled back to Fresno to find his wife being kept alive on life support so he could say goodbye.

“On August 21, 2006, my whole world ended,” Quiroz, 20, wrote on his MySpace Web page. “Just because you see me smile and you see me laugh doesn’t come close to the way I feel inside. I will never be as happy as I was until I’m with my wife again.”

His site was a shrine to Candice. But nowhere in that final posting did Quiroz appear to take any comfort in his two young children, 14-month-old Kylie and the infant Roman, whose birth was Candice’s final legacy. There’s only grief, anger and a sense of increasing isolation.

Last Saturday, police found Roman Quiroz dead and arrested his father on suspicion of killing the baby.

As the case unfolded this holiday week, it left family, friends and Fresno-area authorities stunned and wondering what they missed, how they failed and whether the baby’s death could have been prevented.

“This is just devastating,” said Catherine Huerta, acting director of the Fresno County Department of Child Protective Services.

Her department is now under scrutiny for returning Roman to his father’s custody in October after the infant suffered a broken arm that doctors and police investigators suspected was the result of physical abuse.

“You make the decision with the information you have, but this makes you question everything,” Huerta said.

Quiroz was charged Wednesday with murder. His daughter, Kylie, remains in the care of the county; Quiroz’s sister-in-law has petitioned to assume custody of the girl.

The case has resonated both in Fresno and the nearby farming town of Caruthers, where Robert and Candice grew up and fell in love.

“I really don’t think he had a strong support system,” said Olivia Vallejo, 17, a longtime family friend of Quiroz’s from Caruthers. “I think maybe everyone was expecting too much of Bobby.”

Quiroz’s grief was evident in early September when he gave an interview to KPMH-TV about his wife’s death three weeks earlier.

The baby-faced young Marine seemed shell-shocked, overwhelmed by grief and his new life as a widower with two young children.

“I never expected her to go this early. And now it’s just me with these two kids -- they’re a handful, especially Roman over there,” he said. “It’s really hard right now.”

In one shot, Quiroz awkwardly cradled baby Roman. Nicole Garcia, the reporter who conducted the interview, said this week that he had to be urged to hold his own son.

“I don’t know how to feel around him,” Quiroz said in the interview. “There are feelings inside of me that I kind of want to push him away. But he’s my son, and my wife gave him to me.”

The only time Quiroz seemed to brighten up and crack a smile was when discussing his late wife -- recalling how he and Candice met one day on the school bus.

He was a football player and Candice a cheerleader; the day they met, he was so smitten that he skipped football practice to spend more time with her.

When Quiroz transferred to another high school in nearby Fresno after his sophomore year, the pair kept in touch -- finally becoming a formal couple the next year. From that point on, friends said, they were inseparable.

After graduation Quiroz joined the Marines, mainly to earn a steady income to support his young family, said Olivia Vallejo’s older brother L.J. Vallejo, who was a friend of Quiroz.

Candice gave birth to Kylie last year and the couple were married in January in a simple ceremony. Quiroz was saving his money to give his wife a more lavish wedding, L.J. Vallejo said.

Quiroz was in Kuwait with his Marine unit when he received word that Candice had suffered a brain aneurism shortly after giving birth. In his MySpace blog, Quiroz details a frantic two-day return to Fresno to find Candice being kept alive by machines.

“I laid next to her on the same bed, holding her hand and talking to her all night,” he wrote. “The hardest thing I ever had to do in my whole life was saying goodbye to my wife and closing the casket.”

Olivia Vallejo recalled seeing Quiroz at the hospital after Candice died.

“He really had no emotion on his face. He looked like he was holding it all in,” she said. “You couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“When he lost Candice, he lost everything,” she added. “The way I see it, they were meant for each other. They were soul mates.”

After his wife’s death, Quiroz, a communications specialist, transferred to a Marine reserve squadron in Fresno in order to be close to his family and care for his children. His first and only week of work at the squadron was the week of Nov. 13 -- days before Roman died.

“He was a good Marine. You gave him an order, he carried it out,” said Maj. Timothy Rizner, officer in charge of the squadron. “We knew he was going through a traumatic time, and so the community tried to rally around him, to offer him support.”

But friends and others said it was difficult to reach Quiroz.

A suggestion from a friend that he might eventually move on and perhaps remarry led Robert to delete all of his MySpace friends and contacts.

“I don’t know how some of you think I can move on so soon. Not even a month after I buried my wife,” he wrote. “NOBODY will EVER take over my wife’s position.”

On Oct. 13, Quiroz brought Roman to a local hospital with a broken arm. Doctors immediately judged the injury to be the result of physical abuse, and police ordered the infant taken from his home.

What happened next is the subject of multiple investigations.

Huerta, the head of Fresno County Child Protective Services, said that once a child is placed in county officials’ custody, “We’re on a 72-hour clock” to decide a course of action. They can either choose to make the child a ward of the state or return the child to its home -- sometimes with conditions, such as requiring the parents to attend substance abuse or anger management sessions.

Police officers, who were still investigating the cause of Roman’s broken arm, met with child protection officials several times and “expressed concern about the child being returned to that environment,” said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer.

Nevertheless, Roman was returned to Quiroz’s custody while the investigation continued. Police had a follow-up interview with Quiroz scheduled for Monday -- two days after Roman died.

Huerta couldn’t discuss the specifics of the Quiroz case but said that in potential abuse cases her department normally considers factors such as a parental history of domestic violence or criminal records. Quiroz had no prior record of abuse and no criminal record, police said.

The state Department of Social Services has launched an investigation of the case.

Since Quiroz’s return to Fresno, he and the children had lived with Candice’s older sister Kami Short, while he prepared to move to an apartment. On the night of Nov. 18, Quiroz called 911 saying his son had stopped breathing. Authorities found the baby unconscious with an apparent head wound. An autopsy concluded that Roman died of massive blunt force trauma.

Short, 25, is now seeking full custody of her niece. She declined to speak with The Times because of a gag order by the family-court judge in her petition to assume custody of Kylie.

But in an earlier interview with a local TV station, she expressed anger at Quiroz for not asking for help if he was feeling overwhelmed.

Short said she had repeatedly urged her brother-in-law to attend grief counseling and offered to accompany him to parenting classes. “We told him we would back him up 100%,” she said. “I honestly think he needs serious help.”

On Quiroz’s MySpace page, the last message he received is from Candice -- sent just two days before she died.

It reads: “I’ll love you forever,” in huge, sparkly pink letters.

ashraf.khalil@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Tony Perry contributed to this report.