Metro Atlanta’s Guatemalan community is reeling after two of their own – a mother and father in their 40s – lost their lives late last month, when police shot the man after seeing him attack the woman with a knife in a Chamblee apartment complex. Left trying to pick up the pieces is Jaqueline Lineth Paz de León, the new head of her family at just 21.
In the early morning hours of Sep. 22, Jaqueline’s father, Irlin Paz, stabbed her mother, Emilsi de León. A 911 call summoned Chamblee Police Department officers to the couple’s Wiggins Way apartment. According to the GBI, Paz’s attack was ongoing when police arrived, prompting at least one officer to shoot Paz. Both Paz and de León, who had not been identified by police, died on the scene.
According to Jaqueline, her three younger siblings, ages 7 to 14, were locked inside a bathroom at the time. A third man, a tenant at the home, was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital with multiple stab wounds. Police believe he was trying to defend de León, who was eight months pregnant at the time.
“I am still in shock,” Jacqueline told the AJC in Spanish.
Credit: Facebook.
Credit: Facebook.
She said her parents, alongside other relatives, had gathered the night of the incident to celebrate her 11-year-old sister’s birthday. She suspects her father had too much to drink.
“I knew my father could get violent when he drank,” she said. “When the police came, they told my dad to stop, but he never stopped. He was stabbing my mom in the stomach. He never stopped. And now they’re both dead.”
Jaqueline first received the news while at her job in New York, where she moved from Atlanta roughly a year ago. She says she spent the entire day in tears, while family members pooled together money for a plane ticket. Immediately after landing in Atlanta on Sep. 23, she headed to the police station. Later, she saw her younger siblings.
“We couldn’t speak. I just hugged them and we cried, all four of us. There was nothing to say,” she said.
Telma Borrayo is the Consul General of Guatemala in Atlanta.
“The situation looked like something out of a horror movie,” she told the AJC in Spanish. According to Borrayo, consular authorities have been coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and liaising with family members in the U.S. and Guatemala to lend support.
Repatriating the bodies
Once Jaqueline made it back to Atlanta, she says she was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand, from sorting through her parents’ affairs to finessing logistics for the repatriation of the bodies.
“I asked myself, how am I going to do it? I’m alone. I don’t have the money to send them back. I thought, ‘What if I just drop everything? They’re already dead and I don’t know what to do. What if I just go back to New York and leave things alone?’”
By then, the Guatemalan community in Atlanta had started mobilizing to offer Jaqueline and her family support, which she says “gave her strength.”
Groups of volunteers set up tables around Chamblee to raise funds, decorating them with Guatemalan flags and pictures of Jaqueline’s parents. Some money was raised at a Sep. 26 festival organized in Chamblee in commemoration of Guatemala’s bicentennial Independence Day. Jaqueline’s aunt also opened a GoFundMe fundraiser, drawing over $1,000 in donations. The funds will be used to cover the repatriation expenses – which could total around $10,000 – and to support Jaqueline’s younger siblings.
“Guatemalans have a lot of solidarity. This tragedy really touched everyone, and it was a tragedy that took place in our own community,” Borrayo said.
For Jaqueline, sending her parents’ bodies back to their homeland – including her father’s – is a way to give her and the rest of her family closure.
“At the end of the day, he is still my dad. And this is the last thing I will do for him.”
“It was always their intention to go back [to Guatemala]. My mom’s mom is there. My abuela. She had never been able to see my mom since she left for the U.S. 17 years ago … I know my parents are dead. [Repatriation] is a way to give them a chance to say a final goodbye.”
A troubled past
Paz and de León first moved to the Atlanta metro area roughly a decade ago, after living in New York and Alabama. When the couple moved to the U.S., they left Jacqueline, a toddler at the time, under the care of relatives in Guatemala. After turning 18, she joined them in Georgia, where both her parents worked in construction.
The reunion opened her eyes to her father’s violence.
“Every weekend, my dad drank, and every time he drank, he would get very violent.”
Almost invariably, the target of Paz’s abuse was Jacqueline’s mother. Jacqueline said that, on many occasions, she tried defending her mother from her dad’s blows, and wound up getting hurt herself. She left for New York to get away from the violence.
By the time he launched his final assault on his partner, Paz had already racked up 15 criminal charges, including charges of battery and “cruelty to children in the third degree.” According to DeKalb County police records, he spent five months in jail in 2021, before being released in mid-July.
“I still don’t understand why he was allowed to be set free,” Jacqueline said.
Regarding the circumstances around her father’s death – the 41st fatal police shooting the GBI has been asked to investigate since the start of the year – Jacqueline has mixed emotions.
“I don’t think police should shoot to kill. There are many places they can fire that doesn’t lead to death,” she said. “But in this case, I think it was the right thing to do.”
If Paz had survived the encounter with law enforcement, Jaqueline suspects he would have been “tortured in his mind thinking about what he did … It was better that both parents died. I don’t know how to put it. For him, perhaps it was for the best.”
Moving forward, Jaqueline says her priority will be helping her younger siblings overcome the trauma of the morning that claimed both of their parents’ lives. According to Borrayo, the children are currently in foster care while authorities decide which relative should be given custody.
“I want them to try to heal. I know they are hurting. They are really hurting and they are just kids, they are so young,” Jacqueline said. “If at my age I’m really struggling, I can’t understand what they must be going through. I only want them to move forward, and for each of them to do it at their own pace because we all heal in different ways.”
Lautaro Grinspan is a Report for America corps member covering metro Atlanta’s immigrant communities.
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