After mother was shot to death, her family fights for custody of twin boys | Editorial
In what is surely one of the saddest stories in the annals of the law, a family is petitioning the court for the return of their two sons by arguing that the couple who killed them is not to blame.
One night in September of 2015, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School graduate and aspiring lawyer named Emma Gonzalez was gunned down on a campus walkway outside of her home. Her husband, Alex, was wounded in the gun battle, and the couple had just started dating.
Their boys, ages 10 and 4, were with them at the time of the shooting, but because Alex was in the hospital, the family was unaware of his condition.
The boys were not in the couple’s custody and were left alone with the boys’ mother, who had just gone into labor.
When Alex was released that day, the boys went to see him at the hospital to see if he was all right, but he was not. The family then brought their boys with them to the hospital as well, and it was there that they say Alex was shot and killed.
The boys lived with Gonzalez after their mother was pronounced dead, and they were placed in the boys’ custody. Gonzalez and Alex remarried and have since had two other children together.
To the family’s distress, the boys were taken from them not long after they were in their care. Gonzalez was in the hospital, and Alex, who was a retired police officer, was in a coma.
As reported by the New York Times, Gonzalez’s family has filed a petition in Florida’s Pinellas County Circuit Court requesting the return of the boys.
“Emma and Alex were taken from my family without my knowledge, and without my consent,” Gonzalez’s sister, Gloria Carrasco, said in a statement to The Times.
