Torres admits beating father with mallet

A Sheboygan judge will determine on Friday morning the verdict in the case of 19-year-old Dorian M. Torres, who is accused of bludgeoning his father to death inside their south-side Sheboygan apartment.

During his closing arguments on Thursday afternoon, defense attorney Raj Kumar Singh requested that Circuit Court Judge Terence Bourke consider acquittal on the basis of self-defense, because he acted in reasonable defense of himself against further presumed assaults from his father.

"There is a victim in this case," Singh said. "The victim is my client. He was a battered son."

Torres, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, was charged in January 2014 with first-degree intentional homicide for the alleged murder of 41-year-old Emilio Torres. The teen waived his right to a jury trial earlier this month.

If not acquitted, Singh asked that Bourke consider adequate provocation or second-degree intentional homicide, the former suggesting the defendant acted without self-control or in the heat of passion, the latter suggesting the actions were not planned, but intentional.

The alterations would drop the defendant's possible sentence from mandatory life in prison to a maximum of 40 years prison with 20 years extended supervision.

District Attorney Joe DeCecco asked in his closing statement that Bourke find the teen guilty of the stiffest charge, drawing into question the veracity of Dorian's account on the witness stand of the killing compared to the one he told to a cellmate.

"He knew what he did was wrong," DeCecco said. "It was an intentional act to get rid of a thorn in his side that was controlling his life. ...Emilio Torres did not deserve to die simply because he was a parent who was concerned with holding his child responsible for his actions."

Dorian Torres' mother, sister, brother, aunt and uncle were present during the closing arguments, most of them audibly crying at times. The siblings abruptly left the courtroom — the sister during Singh's arguments and the brother during DeCecco's.

Prior to closing arguments, Torres admitted on the witness stand Thursday morning that he killed his father, landing an initial blow to the head with a mallet that knocked his father to the ground, followed by two or three more as Emilio lay on the floor of their apartment.

According to Dorian Torres' testimony on the stand:

The teen woke up at 1 p.m. on Jan. 23, 2014, in the Meadowland Drive apartment the two shared, invited two teenage girls over to the apartment after school and the three smoked marijuana and Dorian drank alcohol. The teen said he smoked more than a gram of pot and was near heavily intoxicated by the time the two girls left the apartment at about 10:30 p.m.

The girls testified Dorian shooed them out saying "he had something to do" and that they could return in a couple hours after he contacted them.

Emilio Torres came home about an hour after the two left to find a notice on the kitchen counter from the apartment complex owner that tenants had complained about the smell of marijuana.

The father became angry and slapped Dorian across the face, shouting an expletive and calling his son "stupid" for smoking.

Moments later in the kitchen, Emilio pushed Dorian in the shoulder. It was at that point that Dorian said he grabbed a mallet that was on the counter and swung it and hit his father in the head, knocking the man to the ground. Dorian said he later washed the weapon in the dishwasher and returned it to the counter.

"When I hit my father," he began, and then took a long pause before he continued. "When I hit my father, it felt like something, it felt like something hit me too also. I'm not sure if it was a guardian angel or just my connection of my dad's love and I together. It was like from a different dimension. I'm not sure, but it hurt me too. And I lost touch with reality. And I hit him two more times and I snapped back to reality. I just thought, like, what am I doing right now, what the hell am I doing right now?"

He described how he then left the building to go outside and drove to his brother's apartment, but his brother wasn't home. His father was still breathing when he left. Upon his return, his father had no pulse and he began to clean up the large amount of blood.

He retrieved a shower curtain from the bathroom and put a plastic garbage bag over his father's head to catch the blood. He said he did not pull the tie or use the bag to suffocate him, contrary to testimony from a cellmate, Tyler Harrier, who said Dorian Torres confessed the incident to him.

At around 5 a.m. Dorian Torres said he texted one of the two girls who were at the apartment earlier that day. He drove his father's black Audi to pick her up and the two returned to the apartment to have sex.

In the days after the killing, Dorian Torres admitted he used his father's credit cards, including to buy concert tickets.

"I know my father wanted me to be strong. I wasn't going to sit in the corner and just do nothing," the teen said. A long pause followed before he hung his head and said almost inaudibly, "I'm sorry."

He also admits he drove his father's car multiple times, including to South High School and to a Milwaukee-area mall with a friend to buy a drinking game with his dad's money.

"It may sound weird, but I would feel much closer to him while using his credit cards," he said. "I had money in my bank account, but I didn't want to deplete it."

The friend testified Wednesday, June 24, that Dorian had texted her prior to his father's death to ask where he could obtain poison "to kill someone" and inquired about an inheritance another boy received when his father died.

Dorian Torres denied the inquiry about poison, and said he was simply starting a conversation when it came to questions about the other boy's father.

Dorian Torres' brother, Vicente Martinez, took the stand prior to Dorian's testimony to tell how the father had on several occasions physically disciplined him in front of Dorian using a belt or tree branch to strike him across the back, and sometimes "wrestling" him to the ground and slapping and throwing punches at him.

"He was a very nice person," Martinez testified. "He had, for the most part, he had everybody's best interest in mind. But … If he got angry, he got really angry."

Dorian Torres testified his father had physically disciplined him multiple times as well in the year leading up to the killing, slapping him, yelling at him and one time hitting him on the back with a wire hanger.

Dorian Torres' mother, Shelly Torres, and sister, Marissa Rau, testified they rarely saw the father disciplining his sons in a physical manner. Rau called him "a giver" and said "he was very caring" to her children.

School liaison officers testified they had met with Emilio Torres numerous times in regards to misbehavior from Dorian Torres in school and, at times, outside of school. Dorian Torres still has three open cases against him in Sheboygan County Circuit Court that include charges of burglary, damage to property, marijuana possession and theft.

Sheboygan Police Detective Tamara Remington, who was previously a resource officer at Dorian's school, called Emilio "firm and fair" when it came to dealing with his son.

Remington read parts of a letter she wrote at the request of family members to some of Emilio's relatives in Panama. In it, she said Emilio was "a role model" who never displayed violence and never indicated having an aggressive nature.

"We spoke of how impressed we were by his parenting," Remington's letter said.

Dorian Torres said at no point did he ever stop loving his father. His actions that night were out of anger, he said.

Said Dorian: "I wanted him to stop hitting me, stop from slapping me."

Reach Kali Thiel at 920-453-5134 or kthiel@sheboyganpress.com