Accused Boy, 6, Was The Product Of Troubled Family Life
It’s a plain, modest bedroom like a lot of little boys might have.
There’s a Power Rangers poster on one wall and a “Star Student” school certificate on another. A plastic Batmobile rests, poised for action, on the night-stand. And by the door, a penny collection has only started to fill a giant plastic Sparkletts bottle.
Many of the trappings of childhood are here, but the 6-year-old boy who lived in this room has left innocence behind. He was charged last week with attempting to kill a tiny, helpless baby - a crime that has shocked and reviled the nation.
It is an event that may never make sense. But you can only begin to understand when you step outside the small cocoon that a kindergartner created for himself, into a troubled family life and into the unforgiving streets of this economically depressed city on San Francisco Bay.
In Richmond, in a neighborhood called the Iron Triangle, boys no taller than fire hydrants gaze on the world with hard, weary stares. A strung-out woman wanders the street in pink house slippers, ranting at some unseen enemy. Sirens scream.
And a 6-year-old, now charged with attempted murder, often found his way alone. According to friends, relatives and official records, his father is dead, his mother is out for long hours - working at a job where she cares for other people’s children - and his grandmother, a convicted drug dealer, often minded the boy.
If a prosecutor’s allegations are true, it is a life that turned a rambunctious boy with a winning smile into a malicious menace. That turned him into a ringleader, who brought twin 8-year-old boys along to break into the infant’s home. There, he allegedly beat month-old Ignacio Bermudez Jr. nearly to death. And largely, prosecutors allege, because he wanted a plastic tricycle that retails for as little as $19.99.
But there are some in this neighborhood, also friends and relatives of the small ringleader, who say the scenario is inconceivable. They express sorrow for the infant who now lies in critical condition in an Oakland hospital. But they also recall that his alleged attacker cradled other infants in his arms, talking softly to them and supporting their heads.
“I can’t believe it, and I don’t believe it,” said Cordelia Jones, an adult cousin of the suspect. “I have seen this boy, and I know better.”
The boy remains in Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall, where he was visited Friday night by his mother. He could remain there for months, while the courts decide how to deal with such a young offender.
The conditions for the Richmond youth might be traced to an upbringing by a broken and troubled family.
Neighbors remember that if they asked the little boy about his father, he answered plainly: “My Daddy’s dead.” But no one seems to recall who the man was or how he died.
His mother, 27-year-old Lisa Toliver, has worked on and off in child care, according to the Department of Social Services. She also is licensed to provide foster care at her home, although relatives said she had not taken advantage of the status.
Friends described Toliver as struggling to pull herself out of a difficult childhood and adolescence. They said she was sickened by the drug use she saw in her own family and was determined to stay clean.
She made a game, if not always winning, effort to raise her son right, a relative said.
But a Richmond police report describes an August 1995 incident this way: She was partying and drinking late into the night at a friend’s house when a dispute broke out and Toliver began to brawl with three other women. Her shirt was torn off and her face bloodied by the time police arrived. When they tried to intercede, Toliver allegedly lunged at them. It took three officers and a dose of pepper spray to subdue her.
Toliver’s case was referred to the district attorney’s office, but no charges were filed.
Toliver has declined to talk to the media.
When Toliver’s son wasn’t with her, or across the street at Lincoln Elementary School, he often was with his grandmother, Phyllis Rideau, 56, who also has had legal troubles.
In 1994, she pleaded no contest in Alameda County Superior Court to possession of cocaine for sale.
In exchange for their guilty pleas, a judge dismissed a second charge and spared Rideau from state prison. She remains on three years’ probation.
Rideau declined to discuss the matter Saturday morning.
The boy was held back in school this year to repeat kindergarten. And a hearing impairment was discovered recently, forcing him to wear a hearing aid.
Some people in Richmond scoff at the idea that the boy was a sociopath, or extraordinary in any way.
“He is an average grandson,” said Rideau, the grandmother. “He’s just likemost other 6-year-old boys.
“He has his arguments and scrapes in school. He can be hyper,” she said, sitting on the wooden stoop outside the boy’s home. “But he is a very lovable child and well-mannered.”
Other things don’t make sense to the supporters of all three boys. In the world of extended families in which they lived, all had proven they could be patient, even tender, with smaller children. They also had access to plenty of bicycles and toys and would have no need to steal from younger children, supporters said.
On the day of the beating, a neighbor named Patricia Rucker remembers seeing a man form the Bermudez family shoo other children off two tricycles belonging to his kids. Late in the afternoon, she saw the trio, who soon would beocme felony suspects, waving broken slats from a picket fence. Rucker borke up what seemed to her a dangerous game.
Prosecutor Harold Jewett told a judge Friday that the 6-year-old “went to the home and previously expressed the belief that the family there had been harassing him - looked at him the wrong way - and he had to kill the baby.” But Leslie Bialik, the public defender representing the 6-year-old, urged therapy and compassion for the youngster, saying he is “just a little tiny Munchkin.”