Man’s killing at hands of brother, initially thought accidental, leaves family broken
As Shanette Mesa listened to the breathless voice of her late husband’s cousin on the other end of the phone, the story she had been told about his death began to unravel.
Carlos Delgadillo, 30, died in the early morning hours of Nov. 3 after he had been shot in the chest at his mother’s home on Dilworth Court in Fort Worth, where he was watching UFC fights with his brother and cousins. Around 7:30 a.m. that day, Mesa, 29, said her husband’s mother and brother showed up at her front doorstep to tell her Carlos had been shot to death by accident. The brother, Ricardo Delgadillo, 28, explained he was drinking and showing off his guns when one of them went off, Mesa said.
Initial information from Fort Worth police reflected that story, with officers arresting Ricardo on suspicion of manslaughter after he told detectives he drank three tall Bud Light Limes before accidentally shooting his brother to death. But that story was about to change.
On the Wednesday after the shooting, Mesa learned Ricardo had been arrested on a murder charge. She then called Carlos’ cousin — one of four people who were in the room where the shooting occurred — and asked him to tell her what had happened. He told her the truth for the first time, she said, his voice rushed and adrenaline-filled.
Ricardo had gotten into an argument with Carlos, she said, about his belief that Carlos has never stuck up for him in his life as much as he should have. The Marine veteran pulled out one of his many firearms, telling Carlos to get out of his house, but Carlos didn’t take the threat seriously, she said. Then a shot rang out.
Mesa said her world still seems to be upside down more than a month after Carlos died from the shooting, as her 9-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter have to adjust to a world where their uncle killed their father. Her daughter is too young to fully understand, she said, but her son — who was close with his uncle Ricardo — has been “terrified.”
“This was not an accident,” Mesa said over the phone Thursday. “He did it on purpose. He intentionally killed him.”
Officer Tracy Carter, a Fort Worth police spokesman, said this week a “witness who added detail to his/her statement” caused the department to bring a murder charge against Ricardo. He also reiterated that “we believe the suspect intentionally killed his brother.”
Police said in early November the information they received solidified their suspicions it wasn’t an accident perhaps fueled by alcohol, as they had previously thought.
The fatal shooting of Carlos perpetrated by his brother has torn apart an already fractured family, Mesa said, and left her not wanting any more contact with her former in-laws.
Carlos and Ricardo, she said, both grew up in Fort Worth and went to Arlington Heights High School. Carlos had somewhat of a falling out with his family when he was 15 and — upset with his parents — left home for a year, she said. But, as he and Ricardo became adults, they were close.
Ricardo went into the Marines, where he served for five to six years, she said. Carlos became an electrician.
The brothers would communicate all the time through texts and Facebook messages, Mesa said, and would get together a couple of times every month to watch fights on television.
On the night Ricardo shot Carlos, they were supposed to be watching UFC fights as well as the Canelo Alvarez-Sergey Kovalev boxing match in Las Vegas, Mesa said. Ricardo began showing off his rifle and XDM 9mm handgun, according to an arrest warrant affidavit on the manslaughter charge. He reportedly fired one round and Carlos fell to the ground.
He and other relatives brought Carlos to a medical clinic, Complete Emergency Care, in the 6000 block of Camp Bowie Boulevard around 1:30 a.m. Nov. 3. Medics transported him via ambulance to John Peter Smith Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
There’s a lot Mesa doesn’t know about that night, she said, but she knows she wasn’t immediately told the truth.
And that, along with the crime itself, has kept her up at night.
“You should pay the price, no matter what,” Mesa said. “What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.”
‘He’s getting away with it’
The two cousins who were in the room when the shooting occurred felt a creeping sense of panic when they saw the first headlines that week, Mesa said.
Ricardo, according to the initial new reports, was believed to have accidentally shot Carlos.
“They were like, ‘How could this turn into an accident? He’s getting away with it,’” she said.
They confided in their parents, who told them they needed to officially change the story, causing one of the cousins to revisit the police. Mesa said they both had been terrified to talk to police because, as she later learned from one of the cousins, Ricardo had instructed them to say the shooting was an accident.
He was arrested and charged with murder on Nov. 7, after Mesa said he bailed out of jail on the manslaughter charge. He’s currently not in jail, according to Tarrant County court records.
Mesa said she met with an investigator about two weeks after the shooting and learned Ricardo hadn’t told police about her.
As a matter of fact, she said, the investigator told her individuals at the home were saying they didn’t know where Carlos lived because they weren’t close.
“That’s why I didn’t get a knock or a phone call” from police, she said.
She attended the funeral service for Carlos, she said, and the two cousins who were in the room when he was shot were there. They mourned the man Mesa said was a protective father who loved his children, as well as an honest individual who told it like it was.
She met him through her brother, who was his roommate, and they hit it off, she said. They were married for 11 years.
Mesa, her son and her daughter have all had trouble sleeping, she said, and she’s been leaving the light in the hallway on at night. Some nights, she finds herself unable to sleep for hours, her mind busy with thoughts.
Her son has also been noticing noises in the house and becoming scared, she said. Like her, he knows all the details of what happened, as he has been following the news.
Carlos had always wanted Ricardo to be his son’s guardian, or godfather, Mesa said, if something happened to him. That won’t be happening, she said.
She hopes Ricardo will be found guilty, and that one day she can find the words to explain all of this to her daughter.
For now, she said, she wants to be an advocate for Carlos.
“I’m going to be his voice,” she said. “I’m his voice.”
