Slain Selma officer’s girlfriend finds power in their son. ‘He would’ve been a good father’

On her first day back from maternity leave following a series of congratulations from co-workers, Dinuba Police officer Karla Alvarez retreated to her patrol vehicle, parked the car out of sight and cried.

Alvarez hated being away from her baby, constantly thinking if he was OK.

But mostly, she questioned if she could still do the job.

Being a cop is what got her boyfriend killed.

“I was not OK,” Alvarez admitted.

Now, while wearing the police uniform again for the first time in more than three months, Alvarez found herself wondering if she could be as aggressive, and as courageous, and do the job with as much focus as she’d always done before.

Maybe, others wondered the same.

“It was the elephant in the room,” Alvarez said. “Everyone was saying nice to have you back, but everyone was also trying to avoid that conversation. I felt it.”

In Alvarez’s mind, everybody knew she was the girlfriend of Selma officer Gonzalo Carrasco Jr., who died in the line of duty.

Selma officer killed

Alvarez tried for months to ignore her new somber reality.

Three weeks before a pregnant Alvarez would give birth, she found out the baby’s father was shot and killed.

Gonzalo Carrasco Jr., a Selma police officer and Alvarez’s boyfriend of two years, was on a routine patrol when he got out of the cop car to approach a suspicious man.

Alvarez continues to struggle dealing with what happened next Jan. 31, particularly with the unanswerable question surrounding Carrasco’s death.

“Why Gonzalo?” Alvarez asks aloud. “In my head, when I first heard he was shot, I was thinking he’s going to be laughing about it weeks later. And he’d get to tell the baby that he was shot and survived right before he was born.”

Alvarez cries while reminiscing about her boyfriend and thinking of the future they’ll never get to share together.

But through the power of a mother’s love, she brushes aside her sadness and anger to find the strength to smile.

A fake-it-till-you-make-it approach.

As well as Alvarez’s way of showing her baby boy, as well as her older son, that Mommy is, indeed, OK.

“Honestly, it’s been an overwhelming experience,” Alvarez said. “I’ve never really had to experience the death of someone this close.

“The times that I’m by myself at night, my mind wanders and I think about it all.

“But as a mom, you’ve got to be there for your kids,” Alvarez added. “The world isn’t going to stop. These children are going to keep growing. I have to be in the right mind for them.”

A friendship that developed

Carrasco and Alvarez had known each other for years, long before Carrasco joined the Selma PD and Alvarez joined the Dinuba police force.

They had extended family members who were longtime friends, and the two would talk at various functions through the years.

Eventually, Carrasco built the courage to ask out Alvarez, who was six years older than him.

His courtship approach, however, slightly annoyed Alvarez.

“Really, this is how you’re going to ask me out for the first time?” Alvarez recalled telling Carrasco. “With all these people around us? You couldn’t do it privately?”

While neither Alvarez nor Carrasco would consider themselves hopeless romantics, they built a strong chemistry simply by understanding one another.

The grind of being a cop.

Sharing a similar sense of humor.

Using sarcasm sometimes as a sign of affection.

And enjoying heated debates with each other because the heat brought out passion.

“We bumped heads more than a normal couple would,” Alvarez said. “We both wanted to be right all the time. But it worked. We liked spending time together.”

When Alvarez discovered she was pregnant, the couple agreed that Carrasco would move into her home.

Marriage might come later, they believed.

The more pressing issue was focusing on a smooth pregnancy and raising the baby together.

“Aside from going through the journey of being parents together, what I’m going to miss most is our friendship,” Alvarez said. “We got each other.

“I can’t just call him in the middle of the day anymore. I miss that.”

Tragedy just as maternity leave starts

Alvarez was so excited to start maternity leave.

To stop thinking like a cop for a while and just focus on being a mom and prepare for the upcoming pregnancy.

Alvarez and Carrasco had decided that they would convert a spare bedroom into the baby’s room together.

Alvarez, however, wanted to get a little head start while home alone. So she started clearing out spare boxes from the room while leaving the heavier items for Carrasco to move the next day.

Then Alvarez got a call from a law enforcement officer, notifying her there was an officer-involved shooting in Selma and that she might want to check up on her boyfriend.

Information about the shooting was very limited at first.

Alvarez tried to stay calm as she worked through different scenarios in her mind:

Did the officer-involved shooting mean an officer fired their gun but wasn’t injured?

What were the chances that the officer in the shooting was Carrasco?

And if Carrasco was the officer shot, was it serious?

“Are you OK?” Alvarez texted Carrasco.

Then the same law enforcement officer who’d called Alvarez earlier, called again to tell her an officer indeed was struck.

Alvarez checked her phone to see if she’d gotten a text message back from Carrasco.

No reply.

Instead, another phone call came shortly after.

It was Carrasco’s mother, confirming that Gonzalo was shot but he wasn’t dead.

Maybe there was hope?

“I think I was just more in shock at first,” Alvarez said. “I didn’t think anything negative right away.

“He got shot. OK. More than likely, it’s nothing crazy. That’s what I was thinking.”

But after arriving at the hospital and seeing the surgeon come out to talk to Carrasco’s family, Alvarez said she quickly knew that her wishful thinking was way off.

“Just by the look on her face and the way she was talking, not immediately telling us how he was doing,” Alvarez said. “She said they tried. But there was nothing more they could do.

“That’s when I broke down.”

Sobbing profusely and breathing heavily, Alvarez couldn’t believe Carrasco was gone.

Her outpouring of emotions, however, was cut short.

Family and friends tried to console Alvarez and reminded her to be strong for her soon-to-be-born baby.

Hospital workers warned her of the possibility of going into labor sooner than expected because of the traumatic news.

Alvarez was confused.

“Just a lot of mixed emotions,” Alvarez said. “I’m trying to mourn this big loss in my life. But really, I can’t. I have this baby inside me.

“Everyone was concerned about me and the baby. And I understood why. At the same time, you want to react as you normally would even if you weren’t pregnant. It was just something that I had to cope with and figure out on my own. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Investigation findings

Two days after the shooting, an investigation determined that the suspicious person Carrasco had approached was a felon on probation.

The investigation also concluded that the 23-year-old Carrasco was “essentially executed.”

Investigators would not say whether Carrasco, who’d been with the Selma Police Department for two years, was able to draw his weapon before he was shot.

But it was confirmed that Carrasco did not fire his weapon and he was wearing protective equipment at the time of the shooting, according to the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.

“We all agree there was nothing Officer Carrasco could have done,” Selma police Chief Rudy Alcaraz in February. “He was essentially executed.”

A bittersweet birth

It took eight hours being in labor, including two hours of pushing, before Alvarez gave birth.

Maximus Gonzalo Carrasco was born nearly a month after his father’s fatal shooting.

By Alvarez’s side in the delivery room was her mom, as well as Carrasco’s mother.

“It was such a bittersweet moment,” Alvarez said. “The delivery was pretty tough. That’s what I was thinking a lot about.

“But as soon as the baby was born, I started thinking about him and everything else.

“Gonzalo was supposed to be here.”

When the time came to cut the baby’s umbilical cord, Alvarez insisted she’d cut it herself.

But she also couldn’t help but think how Carrasco had previously joked that he’d be cutting the umbilical cord by using a police utility knife from work.

She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry at the recalled memory.

“It was a really weird feeling,” Alvarez added. “You’re supposed to be happy. But at the same time, you’re not.”

Though the couple never agreed what to name their baby, Alvarez said Maximus was the name Carrasco pushed for most.

The baby’s middle and last names were given to further honor his father.

Celebrating Father’s Day

Alvarez occasionally visits the cemetery where Carrasco was laid to rest.

It’s close to her mom’s house, where Alvarez regularly goes to drop off the baby before going to work.

At the cemetery, Alvarez has conversations aloud as if Carrasco were still around.

“When we talked about being parents together, Gonzalo said he was nervous about being a dad,” Alvarez said. “He didn’t know if he’d be any good at it.

“He just knew he wanted the baby to play soccer when he got older, put him on a good travel soccer team — like he did when he was little. I think he would’ve been a good father.”

Alvarez plans to take Maximus to Carrasco’s cemetery for the first time for Father’s Day.

She said “Baby Max” looks a lot like his dad.

And she anticipates that Maximus will resemble Carrasco more and more as he gets older, and might even develop mannerisms of his father.

“Others will tell the story of Officer Carrasco — the hero,” Alvarez said. “I’m going to be more on the personal side. Just talk to him about his dad, Gonzalo. ...

“I just know he would’ve wanted to be here and watch his son grow. As Max’s mom, I want to make sure he understands that.”