Body of man shot by Dekalb deputy going back to Guatemala

By MARCUS K. GARNER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 06/21/08

Marcial Cax-Puluc's only friends in America gathered in the south Atlanta area Saturday night to bid him one last goodbye.

"We are not promised tomorrow," Malcolm Lewis said, consoling the younger mourners who gathered for a visitation at the Airport Mortuary Shipping Service in Hapeville, near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Lewis is a Stone Mountain contractor who had hired the young day laborer from Guatemala to lay tiles.

"When I paid him the $80 for the day, he was like a kid getting a new popsicle," Lewis said. Such was the enthusiasm Cax-Puluc had about working to send money home to his mother.

But that was not to be.

The young Guatemalan day worker was fatally shot June 9 in the home of DeKalb County Sheriff's Deputies Derrick and Linda Yancey.

Derrick Yancey told police he shot Cax-Puluc after the man shot and killed his wife Linda. DeKalb County police are investigating the shooting, and the sheriff's department is conducting an internal probe.

The husband told investigators he had picked up Cax-Puluc to help complete some household projects, and that the day laborer tried to rob the couple at gunpoint.

Cax-Puluc's five roommates dispute that account.

Oscar Perez, 28, who lived and worked with Cax-Puluc for the six weeks he was in the U.S., said he couldn't believe his friend would have done what Yancey said he did.

"He was the kind of person who didn't drink or smoke," Perez said. "But the only proof I have is myself and anyone that knew him."

Another roommate, Alejandro Montes, said he had run the deputy's account of the incident past many of his friends.

"They don't believe it," Montes said. "I don't believe it, either. I'm going to keep telling people this was wrong."

A police report listed Cax-Puluc as being 23, though his roommates said he was just 18. They said he was a field worker who had emigrated to the U.S. from the town of Pedro Sacatepequez to find work.

"He'd never seen that much money before," Perez said of the day Lewis paid him for the six-hour shift.

The Guatemalan Consul General in Atlanta, Beatriz Illescas Putreys, paid half of the $4,000 cost to send his body back to his family. The body leaves on Tuesday, said Putreys, who also attended the visitation.

"His friends came up with the rest (of the money)," she said. "Although they are very poor, they worked very hard."

Saying this won't be the first sad story she's seen in her position, Putreys said she hopes justice is done. "But if he is innocent, this is the very worst thing I've seen," she said.

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