October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month: Friends and Family Need to Get Involved to Stop the Cycle of Abuse, Save a Life
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
This past August Christiana “Tina” Guerra Lewis became another statistic; a victim of a social epidemic far more deadly than the HINI virus. The night before her death, according to the Houston Chronicle, Lewis asked her mother to go with her the next day to get a restraining order against R.P., a man with a lengthy criminal record with at least two dozen arrests including an assault on a family member and injuring a child.
Lewis did not live to see the next day. She became one of the every three women murdered each day in this country by their spouses or intimate partners, according to a recent Chronicle op-ed article by Rebecca L. White, president and CEO of the Houston Area Women’s Center, and James L. Postl, former CEO of Pennzoil Quaker State. Police charged that R.P. stabbed Lewis numerous times in the neck in her trailer residence in Channelview.
R.P. has a long history of domestic violence. He was committed to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on at least four occasions, the last commitment being for an assault on a family member. He came from a family environment of domestic violence. In 2000 his mother was convicted of killing her live-in boyfriend by dropping a 40-lb cinder block on his head.
While the Lewis family told the Chronicle that Lewis was probably unaware of R.P’s extensive criminal record and history of domestic violence, she was aware of his propensity for violence. The Chronicle reported that four days before R.P killed her, he broke into Lewis’ residence, beat her up, raped her, and stole money from her. He warned her not to call the police, threatening to kill her family if she did. She didn’t. She even refused to go to the hospital for treatment, telling a sister: “For what? They’re not going to do anything.” (more…)
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