Home Wrecked

Since Cristino Hernandez's 1993 death, which occurred after a scuffle with Worcester Police, life has been anything but quiet or happy for the Hernandez family. A look at how violence has ripped apart Cristino's family and has shaped what we think of local law enforcement.

by Kristin Lombardi

Noelia Chafoya doesn't get spooked often. Indeed, she is known among family and friends for her bold, unreserved, and fiery disposition. Yet whenever this small, sprightly woman walks along the unpaved stretch of Clarkson Street toward the modest, green-and-brown house nestled at the road's end, Noelia quivers.

"Sometimes I come here," she says in a hushed voice. "But I usually start to cry so I just drive away."

For one of the last times Noelia stepped foot at One Clarkson Street, a swarm of relatives, neighbors, and police officers surrounded the home. It was July 6, 1993, and Noelia's brother, Cristino Hernandez, a 38-year-old Salvadoran living with his mother and another sister, Paula Rolon, slipped into a coma during a violently chaotic, botched arrest in which two Worcester police officers were videotaped sitting on his back, smothering him.

That a routine police encounter could have ended with such severe consequences sent shock waves through the community. Newspapers offered banner headlines: ARREST GONE AWRY. POLICE-BRUTALITY PROBE SOUGHT. The videotape, shown repeatedly on television, prompted residents to publicly decry what looked like a horrifying display of police abuse.

Cristino's death of a brain injury 10 days later further stoked local outrage. Throughout the summer of '93, hundreds of residents and minority leaders held rallies and vigils to push for a fair, impartial investigation. The years have dragged on, however. And while a handful of dissatisfied activists continues to demand justice, most protestors have faded away.

What's also lost in the furor over Cristino's death and subsequent investigations is the grieving family -- a quiet, industrious clan not only devastated by the brutal, unexpected loss of a beloved son, but also embittered by the official handling of it. For they have witnessed Cristino's mental illness make headlines, tainting their memories of his sweet, sharing nature. They have endured the scars of trauma -- the panic attacks, the nightmares, and the strained family relations. They have even been targeted by vicious, hurtful rumors, which accuse the family of staging Cristino's death for its own benefit. All this while, at every investigative level, the two officers involved in the case have been absolved of any criminal wrongdoing; they were eventually reinstated -- a criticized move that, for some activists, marks the beginning of poor police-community relations in Worcester.

Now that the family's wrongful-death lawsuit -- which argues Cristino's death could have been avoided were it not for the officers' negligence -- is slated for trial, perhaps those left behind, indeed the entire community, can heal. More than six years after that fateful day, Noelia stands before the Clarkson Street home, at which she frantically witnessed and attempted to stop Cristino's arrest. Today, though, she is overcome by silence. She surveys the scene: the shabby patch of grass where she first realized Cristino was in trouble, the stairs where she saw her hysterical mother pleading with police. But new tenants have moved in, erasing any sign the house is the site of Worcester's most notorious police-misconduct case. For Noelia and her family, though, that's all One Clarkson could ever be.

"The community has done wrong by us," Noelia later confides, clicking her tongue at the indignity her family has had to sustain. She adds, "People haven't lived what my family lived. They don't know what we go through; they only hurt us more."

THE THUMPING JOLTED Elisa Quintanilla from bed in the early morning, a noisy, repetitious thud like the horses that used to gallop across the family's farm in Cuisnahuat, El Salvador. She blinked at the haze. It was too early for activity, she could tell. Yet the thumping seemed to be getting louder and closer.

The noise drew her downstairs, where she spotted her eldest son, Cristino, sitting on the living-room sofa, silent, staring ahead. Outside the family's home, someone was breaking in, Quintanilla realized. She ran toward the front door and splayed her tiny figure, acting as a human barricade. "I was scared," she recalls, "I had just woke up. I didn't want them to come inside."

At the door were WPD officers David Reidy and Christopher McInnes. While Quintanilla slept, her son had been involved in a strange sort of tango with the officers, which marked the culmination of a day's worth of trouble between Cristino and his Providence Street neighbors. According to the 1993 inquest into his death, Cristino had rung doorbells, tapped on windows, and harassed the neighbors' dog. On July 5, in fact, two officers (not Reidy and McInnes) had visited Quintanilla to tell her they'd received a complaint. She still remembers explaining how her son had difficulty sleeping at night because he worked the late shift at the T&G mailroom. Nights were restless times for Cristino, who tended to calm himself by meandering to his sisters' nearby homes. If he couldn't sleep, the police had told her, keep him inside.

So Quintanilla later begged: "Please, Cristino, stay in the house at night."

"Yes, mama," he replied, "I will."

But he ended up wandering around that night anyway, prompting an early-morning call to police. This time, officers Reidy and McInnes responded, arriving at the Providence Street address behind the Hernandezes'. At first, the inquest reported, Cristino drew a toy gun and pretended to fire at the officers. Called back to the site, they discovered Cristino emerging from the bushes with a golf bag and a plastic tube. He struck Reidy's arm with the tube and then ran home. Reidy followed in hot pursuit.

Which brings us to Quintanilla's futile attempt to block the entrance to her home. Reidy soon managed to break the door with enough force that, she says, she fell backwards onto the floor, suffering bruises and a swollen hand. Though police have maintained Cristino kicked Reidy in the groin, Quintanilla disputes this. Instead, she says, Reidy found Cristino seated. "He didn't get up," she insists, admitting, however, that he gripped the armrest as Reidy tried to restrain him. (The autopsy revealed sofa fabric under his fingernails.)

By the time Quintanilla recuperated, Reidy had sprayed Cristino with mace. A stifling, pungent fog permeated the room, causing her to gasp. Her son remained quiet, save for a muffled cry. He screamed Mama, mama, mama. "I never heard him speak again," Quintanilla says. She then saw Reidy hit Cristino's head with what she believes was a gun. Blood splattered on the curtains, on the carpet. Quintanilla held her hands over her face and screamed, "Dios mio!"

Her wailing awoke Paula, who rushed to find "the big one," as the family calls Reidy, beating Cristino. "I tried to reason with them," she says. "I kept saying, `Please stop hitting him. Leave him alone.'" McInnes had entered the scene and was now grabbing Cristino's feet. A struggle ensued. The officers succeeded in pushing Cristino to the floor. "Everything was chaotic," Paula says. "I realize it only lasted minutes but it felt like hours." Nervous yet wanting to intervene, she watched her brother squeeze his eyes shut while being sprayed again. All Paula could think to do was dial her sister.

The phone rang just before 7 a.m. Noelia, still in bed, recognized her sister's sobbing voice: "Call an ambulance! It's Cristino, mama!" Noelia ran the stretch of Clarkson Street from her house a block away. She assumed her mother must be sick. But when she arrived, she spotted Quintanilla, standing on the front stairs and moaning in Spanish.

Paula stood with a video camera, which she'd hastily retrieved from her bedroom. The camera had been used the week before to record the happier moments of her son, Anthony, and his fifth birthday. Now a trembling Paula was taping the spectacle in front of them.

Cristino was lying on the ground, face down, motionless. Noelia sunk when she saw that his hair by his left temple was matted with blood. His legs were shackled, the officers were kneeling on his neck, back, and his buttocks. Reidy was forcing Cristino's hands, handcuffed behind him, into a position high above his head. Noelia, a nurses' aide, noticed her brother's fingers had turned blue. "I knew he wasn't doing well," she says. "I yelled at the officers, `What are you waiting for? Take him to the hospital.'"

Still taping, Paula chimed in: "You guys are gonna be in big trouble!"

"I'm telling you one last time to take it inside," Reidy retorted.

Captured on the five-minute videotape, he soon made good on his threat, rising from Cristino's back to arrest the sisters. Paula recalls being frightened; she'd never been in trouble. But what alarmed her more was her mother's shrieking. "She was scaring me the way she was crying and screaming," Paula says. "I knew if something happened to Cristino she would be devastated."

Ten days later, Cristino died at St. Vincent Hospital. The medical examiner stated the cause of death was a lack of oxygen to the brain due to physical restraint. An autopsy revealed hemorrhaging in the shoulders, a torn scalp, a broken rib, along with three head lacerations that needed stitches. Dirt particles were also found embedded in Cristino's face. For the family, it was an ugly, ruthless kind of death, one that stripped their loved one of his dignity. "They treated him worse than an animal," Paula laments.

EVEN NOW RELATIVES FIXATE as much on the severity of injuries as on the events of that fateful day. Particularly because the violent way Cristino died contradicted the whimsical way he lived. As Paula explains, "Cristino acted like a little kid. He was so innocent, so playful. I remember thinking how strange it was to see him die in this way, like some troublemaker."

He was someone who modeled his life by the adage A rolling stone gathers no moss. As a boy in El Salvador, Cristino readily accepted the duties of eldest son, sowing the fields and tending the horses from dawn until dusk. "Of all my children," Quintanilla says, "he helped me most." As a man in Worcester, Cristino continued to mind the household, cleaning, shopping, and saving up $6000 so he might buy a house in El Salvador big enough for his entire family.

His gentle, giving nature was a constant inspiration. Once Cristino took his family -- his mother, his brothers Gabino, Felippe, Luis, and Melvin, and his sisters Rubidia, Noelia, and Paula -- out to Sunday brunch at the Pickle Barrel on Pleasant Street. As soon as he sat down, Cristino declared everyone should eat what they wished. He was buying. Money didn't matter. When the $50 bill arrived, he was upset because, he told them, "you guys are too cheap."

Another time his siblings were sitting at the kitchen table on a hot, summer afternoon, laughing, chatting. "We heard a knock at the door," brother Luis relays. He opened it to find a giggling Cristino; his arms were filled with ice-cream cones.

"Why didn't you get help?" Luis asked.

"I wanted to surprise everyone," Cristino responded.

What delighted him most were children. A devoted uncle, he'd often spend time teaching his 12 nieces and nephews the board game Parcheesi. Or he'd play his English-language tapes to them and confide: "Trust me. I will help you learn English and study hard." Many a night Cristino would rock the babies to sleep; Quintanilla still has cassettes of his lullabies, of him singing, Sleep tight my little child.

Cristino was not without troubles, however. He'd only obtained what we would consider a fifth-grade education. And at age 16, he suffered a life-threatening brain hemorrhage. Cristino had complained of a headache for days before suddenly dashing across the fields, screaming in agony. He never fully recovered; indeed, friends describe him as being mentally slow, low-functioning, and rather odd -- so odd he began speaking with what the family calls "the voices." "He would get up and start talking to no one," Paula says, "then sit right down." Such behavior didn't particularly bother relatives, most of whom came to view it as intrinsic to him.

As Paula puts it, "That was Cristino. He wasn't hurting anybody."

But Cristino's peculiar and erratic behavior did contribute to earlier run-ins with police, which, in turn, led him to Bridgewater State Hospital for evaluation. During a six-month stay there, he was diagnosed as "grossly and acutely psychotic" and manic depressive -- subject to wild mood swings that could lead to frenetic, delusional activity.

And, after his death, his mental-health history seemed enough to put Cristino himself on trial -- for some, his diagnoses helped brand him a vicious criminal. As soon as the '93 inquest was released, and Cristino's psychosis made public, family members had to refute press reports that focused on his "bad-man image." In the inquest, Judge Patrick Fox dismissed eyewitness accounts because, he reasoned, they didn't mesh at all with Cristino's documented "violent and bizarre behavior."

To this day, Quintanilla shakes her head at the way in which her son's "good, decent" reputation was tainted. Angered and exasperated, she says those who deemed her son violently disturbed never met Cristino and, as such, don't understand the truth. "Everyone who knew him said he wasn't violent." Noelia, too, is adamant about her brother's nature. "I know my brother," she asserts. "Cristino could be [mentally ill] but not violent. He didn't deserve to die."

If Cristino was made out to be a criminal, he wasn't alone. Not only were Paula and Noelia arrested on bogus charges of assault and battery (the charges were dropped), but they were carted away half-naked in sheer, short nighties and bare feet. "We never touched the officers, just heckled them," Paula recalls. "I couldn't believe my crime was trying to save my brother." At WPD headquarters, the two stuck together in a cell for hours, surrounded by prostitutes and drug addicts. "It was embarrassing," Paula adds. "People looked at us like we were trash. The whole time I was thinking, `Why am I here?'"

Such frustration followed Paula and her relatives throughout the ensuing months. The inquest, for one, infuriated family and friends. Although excessive force was determined, Judge Fox humiliated the eyewitnesses by essentially labeling them liars (according to the inquest report) in spite of Cristino's physical injuries. Secondly, the WPD internal-affairs report, while criticized as "a whitewash" by community activists, countered the inquest and portrayed Cristino as a dangerous criminal of "superhuman strength." Finally, the city administration ignored crucial findings from the Worcester Human Rights Commission, which had ruled Reidy and McInnes were guilty of negligent homicide. Rather than be punished, the officers were exonerated and reinstated.

All this helped foster a sense that the system had betrayed the Hernandez family -- a sense exacerbated by city officials' indifferent responses. Even in the days before Cristino died, Noelia recalls the family being summoned to City Hall to speak with City Manager Tom Hoover and Worcester Police Chief Edward Gardella. At one point, she says, officials challenged the family: why should we believe you? An incensed Noelia led her family out the door.

Councilors distanced themselves too, largely because of what activists suspect is the politically powerful police union. Once the lawsuit was filed, nobody dared to show any sign of compassion.

Perhaps more distressing, though, were the vicious, hostile letters that appeared in newspapers, church bulletins, and in the mail. "We should be supporting our Police Officers and their families FOR PUTTING THEIR LIFE on the line," one letter stated, "especially in this day and age with the likes of Cristino Hernandez!" Paula even received about a half-dozen anonymous notes from the Ku Klux Klan that read: "We don't like Hispanic immigrants. Go back to El Salvador. Cristino deserved to die."

ELISA QUINTANILLA, a squat, spirited, sincere woman, holds court in the tidy kitchen of her modest Dorchester Street home that serves as the family focal point. A constant stream of children, cousins, and grandchildren trickles into the room, each announcing his or her arrival with a kiss to Quintanilla's cheek. But she hardly notices. Instead, she and daughter Rubidia fuss over a tableful of Cristino's things -- pulled out for a visitor -- that normally stay underneath Quintanilla's bed, just as her son had left them.

There is his well-worn wallet with a Massachusetts ID and portraits of his seven siblings and his nieces and nephew. Hidden inside are two folded checks totaling close to $200 -- his earnings before he died. There's also his favorite board game, Parcheesi, now faded and tattered because, Quintanilla recalls, Cristino carried it in a golf bag everywhere, even on that fateful day.

Family members gather around Quintanilla as she flips through stacks of old snapshots. Happy times prevail: they laugh at yesterday's bad hairdos, at yesterday's fashions. There are many photos of Cristino -- pictured before the New York City bus station, sporting a leather jacket and sunglasses; at a local plastics factory, poised to push a big, red button; at Navidad, snuggled beside Rubidia, surrounded by wrapped gifts. In every image, Cristino offers up the same unassuming, teeth-baring grin.

"Look here," Rubidia says, chuckling. She has found her wedding pictures depicting a dapper Cristino in a pressed blue suit. The images prompt her and older brother Luis, a lanky, amiable man, to reminisce about Cristino's fancy for fine clothing -- how he'd trek to Armando's on Grafton Street to buy one blue suit after another, and how he'd wear them whenever he could.

"He loved to dress up," Luis says, smiling.

"He went to the beach with his suit and tie on!" Rubidia giggles.

A rumble of laughter then fills the room. But the subject of Cristino's death arises, and it dampens the mood. Several family members slip away, their faces showing a certain sadness. It's now up to Quintanilla to discuss the strain of grief. Cristino's brutal, unnatural death has left each family member to mourn differently, increasing the potential for conflict. "It has created friction," Hector Pineiro, the family attorney, acknowledges. "It separated the family and brought them together." In the past six years, relatives have felt isolated, fearful, ashamed, overwhelmed by grief and guilt. Some have become so frustrated, they refuse to discuss the case. Others have lost hope, beaten by a belief their story was ignored. Or they've grown resentful, weighed down by the incident's controversy. Members have undergone years of therapy; marriages have disintegrated; and several family relationships have been essentially severed. Perhaps most poignant is how everyone worries that Quintanilla's inability to let go of her son has turned into a hurtful obsession.

At the Dorchester Street house, Quintanilla settles into a chair, rubbing her oddly bloated belly. Not long after her son perished, her stomach swelled. She vomited and coughed blood for months. "Doctors thought it was tuberculosis," she says. "And then cancer." Test after test was administered, each showing her to be in good health. But she continues to complain, leaving doctors baffled.

"I eat nothing yet my stomach swells," Quintanilla explains. The disorder may best be described as psychosomatic, as if the womb that bore her son now bears her pain.

Quintanilla talks about the nightmares, depression, and her therapy; her sad, onyx eyes lend her the aura of a victim. Suddenly, they well up with tears. She doesn't sob, but rather she swipes at them, as if those tears provide no relief. For years, family and friends never saw Quintanilla weep; yet today, she looks stuck in her grief. "I cry all the time," she confides. Holidays and birthdays have turned sour because, she says, seeing her kids together reminds her of the loss. Many an event she's spent in her room, behind closed doors.

"I cry and say, `Oh mi hijo! Mi hijo!'" Quintanilla sighs and adds, "My children don't want me to talk about Cristino anymore. . . . They want me to move on."

But her mourning has only been exacerbated by years of legal proceedings and by a newfound hypersensitivity to police. Since Cristino died, she's noticed more and more police officers -- in the street, in the neighborhood. For the longest time, she felt hounded by cops, convinced that, as she puts it, "they knew where we were going."

Panic sets in whenever she sees the police. Take the time her youngest son Melvin stood in front of the house, waiting for a ride. An officer approached, Quintanilla recalls, questioning Melvin about a stolen car. But as soon as she spotted the cop near her son, she came undone. "I screamed, `Something is going to happen!'"

As she tells the story, a stout, reticent Melvin sits in a corner and stares at the floor. Quintanilla glances at him, then whispers, "He doesn't like to talk about it. He won't tell me what happened."

When asked if that is true, Melvin stands, and then leaves the room.

His mother goes on, describing how she's become vigilant with her sons and their whereabouts for fear police will hunt them down. "I am afraid they will suffer the same fate."

But her concern can be a source of consternation for her children. Paula, for example, says her mother views any contact with cops as a threat, even as retaliation. (There's no evidence to suggest WPD officers harass the family.) Once her son Gabino received a traffic ticket and Quintanilla, as Paula says, "started crying, `They know who we are! It's because of Cristino!'" Another time, two officers appeared at the house in response to a robbery from her son's parked truck. When Quintanilla opened the door, the sight of the cops made her face drop.

"She gets frightened and nervous," agrees Noelia, who was urged by her mom to intervene in the Melvin encounter. "I don't blame her. Police are supposed to protect you, not kill your brother."

As for Noelia, the loss has sparked an unabashed, militant reaction. Ever since Cristino landed in the hospital, Noelia's pushed for answers. Her goal: city officials need to acknowledge that Cristino would be alive were it not for the officers. A driving force behind the current Justice for Cristino Hernandez Committee, Noelia's organized meetings, attended rallies, and delivered forceful speeches that, one activist says, "Pineiro would find embarrassing" because it might jeopardize the family's court case.

Although Noelia appears a pillar of strength, her brother's fate has taken its toll. Witnessing him hooked to all manner of life-preserving devices in her workplace, St. Vincent Hospital, forced her to quit her nurses'-aide job. She soon caved under the case's pressure -- the relentless media attention, the repeated investigations. "Noelia couldn't handle it," Paula says. "We had to take her to the hospital, she was losing control."

Stress later prompted Noelia to flee to El Salvador, where she remained for close to two years. "I had to get away," she recalls. "I had to forget." Yet she couldn't entirely escape from her grief. Although Noelia declines to discuss her ex-husband, friends and family say her strident behavior has contributed to the break-up of her marriage. The case has also jeopardized her US-citizenship application -- partly because of her extended El Salvador trip, which discounted the prior years she had spent in the US. And the false arrest further complicates her immigration status -- even though the charges were dropped.

Today, the pain reveals itself in Noelia's flushed, moon-shaped cheeks and her edgy, tone as she discusses the fact that, after all these years, she's still tormented by one question: Why? Her quest for understanding tested her faith in God -- until she realized Cristino's death had resulted from human mistakes, not God's will. Plagued by the need for answers, Noelia has even blamed her son Eduardo, now six. For years, she'd tried to have a boy, suffering two miscarriages before giving birth to him -- only to lose her brother within weeks. For her, the coincidence seems a sort of destined exchange.

"It's crazy, right?" Noelia asks, her voice cracking. "But why did this happen to our family? Why?"

Just as Noelia has directed her emotions outward, Paula has directed them inward, withdrawing into a shell. "I am more like my brothers," she admits, referring to the four Hernandez men who won't dwell on the incident largely because of profound guilt. "They feel responsible," Paula says. "They think if they were there, they could have prevented the accident."

Of course, she might easily be describing herself. For in the aftermath, Paula's strayed from the tightly knit clan. She doesn't spend as much time with her mother as she could, although she lives in the same triple-decker house. And she's deliberately pulled away from the Justice committee -- at a price. Now when she watches her mother and sisters go to Justice events without her, it fuels her feelings of alienation. "It's something inside me," she relays with red, wet eyes. Her gentle voice grows fainter as she continues: "Why didn't I do more to save him? I feel my family is disappointed I didn't stop the abuse."

So consumed by shame, Paula has dreams rooted in self-blame. Take the recurring dream of Cristino, who is sitting in a chair at the former Clarkson Street house, simply staring at Paula. Sometimes he speaks but she cannot hear him. Other times he appears with their father, who died more than a decade earlier. Cristino's haunting image serves to reaffirm Paula's distorted belief that, she says, "I didn't do enough. It has to be something I did wrong."

Ultimately, the incident has hardened Paula and her relatives, leaving them cynical, distrustful, and convinced that Hispanic immigrants in America are, as Quintanilla says, "worth nothing." After all, this family of Salvadoran campaneros has watched community support diminish, viewing it as a personal slight, a puzzling sign of public satisfaction. They have heard vicious rumors circulate, accusing them of being fiends, exploiting Cristino's death for financial gain and media attention. (The Justice committee received at least one anonymous letter accusing the family of staging the death for insurance money.) Such things have only hurt the family more, forever shattering their faith in America as a place where people can prosper. As Paula says, "My family was naive. We thought people would notice our pain and give us justice."

Perhaps most striking is Quintanilla's lost naiveté. At one point, for instance, she confides that she's realized people may not accept the videotape as proof of police brutality. But in a poignant, indeed tragic, exclamation she says she's grateful for the tape anyway. "Because at least," she insists, "they cannot say I killed my son."

IF THE HERNANDEZ FAMILY has lost its innocence, so has the Worcester community. Before 1993, the city had never witnessed a serious police-misconduct incident, preserving what's been described as a "Rockwell image" of the WPD. But with Cristino's death, the public became disillusioned, suspecting, for the first time, that a police officer might overstep authority. More and more people grew cynical with the WPD internal-affairs report exonerating the officers despite the inquest and despite Cristino's injuries.

In the words of Gordon Davis, the longtime Justice committee chairman, "No one imagined the police department would bend over backwards to defend the officers."

Undoubtedly, the case, which has been called "pivotal," has fostered public distrust, as well as led to the current scrutiny of the WPD. Not only are residents less likely to defend Reidy and McInnes today, but they're less likely to rally behind the WPD in general -- proof, for activists like Davis, the '93 incident has crippled the department's credibility.

"There is no way for police to restore public trust," he claims, "at least not with this generation."

Even sources inside the department admit the WPD cannot live down Cristino's death. One officer begrudges, "It is brought up ad infinitum, ad nauseam." Although he insists the case hasn't reversed public support for police, he's discouraged that family supporters won't let it fade from collective memory. "They won't be satisfied until the city lynches the officers in front of City Hall," he exclaims. "Then they'll complain it took too long and the rope wasn't new."

This sort of defensive, bruised attitude tends to characterize police officers' reactions to the Cristino affair. Cops have literally closed in on Justice committee events, circling demonstrators and telling them, You can't be here. Move along. Davis recalls one officer, the soccer coach of Davis's kids, who made a point of pulling him over on Shrewsbury Street.

Instead of issuing a ticket, the officer informed Davis: "You're wrong. Hernandez was no good."

"I'm sorry," Davis replied, "we disagree."

Another committee member, Isabel Marinus, had a similar run-in with the police just last year. Upon requesting to see WPD public records, she received a nasty, e-mailed response from a prominent local detective:

You focus on Cristino Hernandez case, show the video, complain, defame and denounce, yet you ignore the truth and absolve him of his criminal irresponsibility. Those officers acted within the law. However it remains clearly evident that, in your opinion, all of the well educated lawyers, judges, and juries are all wrong. The conspiracy theory is played out.

Officers still make their presence known at the annual July 16 rallies commemorating Cristino's death. This past July, a handful of officers arrived at City Hall on motorcycles, revving engines, circling the 30 sign-waving demonstrators. In another instance, at a Worcester Area Rainbow Coalition police-brutality forum, 15 or so officers, in plain clothes, sat across from the Hernandez family as organizers played the videotape. Afterward, Noelia assumed the podium and made a dramatic plea for help in securing justice. When she sat down, the officers walked out -- a disruptive, widely noticed move that did little to bring both sides together.

As Noelia says, "They stand in their blue uniforms all macho-tough, their actions telling us, `Whatever you do, we're here.'"

If anything, such behavior speaks to the effect that this case has had on the overall department. One longtime officer, now an administrator, recognizes how people may interpret the cops' strong responses as a closing of the ranks -- at times, rightfully so. "When a police officer comes under attack," he allows, "fellow officers tend to circle the wagons. We get defensive, more protective of each other."

Ultimately, he adds, this case resonates among officers because it touches the very image they hold of themselves. "All of us know that there but for the grace of God, it could be me."

By all accounts, no one at WPD has been more affected than officers Reidy and McInnes. Neither Reidy nor McInnes responded to interview requests; yet at headquarters, both boast reputations for being decent, hard-working, "stand-up" men -- men who aren't at all like the rogue, arrogant cops suggested by the videotape. Reidy, in particular, has been hailed as "an officer and a gentleman." Before '93, each had enjoyed a clean record, with four dismissed citizens' complaints between them after a combined 14 years on the force.

But since that fateful day, their lives have been turned upside down. As one WPD insider laments, "These officers will never be the same." They've been known to dwell on the incident, fixating on what might have gone wrong. Those who work with the officers allude to their feelings of guilt, self-doubt, and of self-loathing. "The hard-nosed, insensitive stereotyped cop doesn't apply here," the same insider says. "Neither of them took this lightly."

He then scoffs, hinting at a deep cynicism among police. "If you tell the public the officers have suffered, it won't matter," he claims. He later adds, "This was a terrible situation for both sides. It takes a long time to heal from something like this."

QUINTANILLA V. WORCESTER has wend its way through Worcester Superior Court in a slow, methodical manner. In the wrongful-death lawsuit, Quintanilla, Paula, and Noelia charge police brutality and neglect, alleging that Reidy and McInnes caused Cristino's death, then delayed necessary medical attention. They're suing the officers, the administration, Gardella, and Robert Lamprey (who drove the wagon) for civil-rights violations like excessive force and intimidation. The sisters also cite false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution.

Ever since they filed suit in 1994, family members have longed for the type of closure only the courts can provide. But they've faced a series of disappointing postponements. When what had been an October 12 trial date was abruptly pushed back last week to January 3, 2000, in order to secure a "special-assignment judge," as it's known, frustrations were felt again. The case has sparked so many letdowns that relatives have questioned their own lawyer's competence, despite the fact that police-misconduct cases are famously tough to handle.

Still, Quintanilla has been especially challenging. A medical-malpractice attorney with a winning smile, Pineiro has had to take a virtual crash course in the complexities of civil-rights law. Then the city administration responded to Quintanilla by filing its lawsuit against the pepper-spray manufacturer, Zarc International Inc., alleging Cristino died from the mace. (It was thrown out last year.) The suit is also full of disputed facts. A glance at court records reveals a fierce back-and-forth in countless motions, court dates, hostile witnesses. Even Pineiro acknowledges, "No one is giving an inch in the case."

But after the drawn-out, five-year discovery period, during which 30 depositions and 80 city records were obtained, Pineiro says he's confident the family has a solid case -- so much so, he adds, "I'm hopeful for a finding that validates the allegations."

The prospect of a multimillion-dollar judgment offers little consolation to the Hernandez family, however. For what they want they cannot get from a civil case: punishment. Noelia is already scheming how to gain what she refers to as "real justice" by vowing to try to exchange any awarded damages for a city promise to fire the officers. Since Paula supposes she'll never see the officers jailed, she's resolved to spend the money, if they win, on taking Cristino to El Salvador to be buried.

"He always said he wanted to go home to die," she says. For Paula, moving Cristino's grave would be the ultimate conciliatory gesture toward the brother she feels she's wronged; in fact, she'd have moved him years ago, if not for her mother.

Visiting Cristino's humble, lonely grave is one of the rare things that gives Quintanilla solace nowadays. On quiet afternoons she comes to Hope Cemetery seeking bliss. "He's here," she whispers, mindful of the sanctity of her son's resting place. "I like being close to him."

This particular afternoon Quintanilla stands before a roadside tombstone etched "Cristino W. 1954-1993." With a pinched face, tilted head, and clasped hands, she prays her son is safe in heaven. Padre Neustra, Padre Neustra. Her voice cracks. She puts her hands to her lips, fighting back a blooming wetness in her eyes. Relief doesn't last long, she admits. For every time she visits Cristino's grave, Quintanilla is reminded of the violent, unexpected way in which he died.

Several silent moments pass before she tends to the yellow, white, and red garden mums adorning the grave. Her teenage grandson Ricardo watches Quintanilla quietly, his hands shoved into the pockets of his beige, baggy pants. When his uncle perished, Ricardo was 12. He remembers the videotape, he relays, how his grandma screamed. Suddenly, his body is shaking. "I try not to think about it," Ricardo sobs. He glances at the ground and his long, black eyelashes look glued by the tears.

"It hurts," he says. "The family has never seen justice. We need to do something about the justice."

Quintanilla approaches her grandson, then gives him a hug. They hold on to each other, their arms locked, as she mutters, "We knew Cristino would die some day -- but never like this."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com