Last week, a young married father in Texas was shot and killed after physically shielding his 4-year-old son from the bullets of an armed robber. His pregnant wife looked on in horror.
On Saturday afternoon, Juvenal Antero, 24, was in his Dallas apartment with his family when two strangers knocked on the door and asked for a plunger. The victim's wife, Elizabel Cárdenas, he told broadcaster WFAA.
The uninvited guests then forced their way into the apartment, with one of them displaying a gun.
“I’m slamming the door. [the robber’s] I'm pulling my hand and holding on to the door with all my might,'' said Cárdenas, who is 11 weeks pregnant.
Antero ran back to get his gun and found his child in the crosshairs of the armed intruder.
“My husband jumped in front of our son and took the bullet for him,” Cárdenas said in another article. NBC DFW Channel Interview. “Her husband was able to fight back and protect her family and protect her son.”
Antero was shot once and fell to the floor as the robbers fled.
“He said, 'They hit me.' They hit me. I'm going to die. I don't want to die here,” Cardenas told WFAA.
Antero was rushed to a local hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.
Antero and Cárdenas' son witnessed the whole tragic episode, which left him traumatized.
“My son always asks me, when will my father come back to life? Things a child shouldn't witness, shouldn't hear. I wouldn't wish this on anyone,” Cárdenas said.
The couple was just a few months away from welcoming their second child, who was conceived after the mother's two previous miscarriages and years of infertility treatment.
On Wednesday, Antero and Cárdenas were scheduled to go to a prenatal appointment to hear their baby's heartbeat for the first time and take ultrasound photos.
Instead, the family is now busy planning Antero's funeral.
“I have to welcome this new baby into a world without a father,” said the grieving widow, who described her slain husband as having a “heart of gold”.
So far, no arrests have been made in connection with Antero's killing, and no suspects have been publicly identified.
His wife called on the armed bandits to surrender.
“No one should have their life taken away because you wanted what we had,” Cárdenas said. “You'll never have what we had or what we continue to have.”
