Andy’s Unity Park opens Saturday, honors slain Santa Rosa teenager

Marisol Mendez, 28 and eight months pregnant with her second daughter, sat on the porch of her home on Horizon Way in Santa Rosa’s Moorland neighborhood this week watching contractors, volunteers and community organizers put the finishing touches on Andy’s Unity Park.

She and her husband, Andres Mendez, 30, saw the fence that surrounded the park come down recently, a revelation that only heightened their anticipation of seeing Sonoma County’s newest park opened in a community that has long lacked for public open space.

The 4.4-acre park memorializes 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was fatally shot on Moorland Avenue by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy in 2013. County officials and community leaders will hold an official opening ceremony for the park this afternoon at 1 p.m.

“It’s a great way to honor Andy Lopez,” said Andres Mendez. “I know there wasn’t enough justice for him.”

The site, overseen by the county’s Regional Parks department, covers two parcels of former private property acquired in late 2014, more than a year after the shooting. It offers a little bit of something for everyone, including a large turf field, community garden, off-leash dog run, basketball court, small concrete skate area, playground and picnic and gathering spaces.

On the west parcel, there are pathways and natural areas, while the east parcel contains a memorial garden featuring a bronze-relief likeness of Andy’s face surrounded by a tile mosaic showcasing his interests.

Lopez was walking along the then-vacant Moorland Avenue lot on Oct. 22, 2013, carrying an airsoft BB gun made to resemble an AK-47 when he was shot by Deputy Erick Gelhaus. Gelhaus told investigators he ordered the boy to drop the gun, which he took to be a real assault weapon. He said he opened fire as Lopez turned around and raised the barrel of the gun in his direction, according to authorities.

Gelhaus was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office and promoted to sergeant in 2016 by then-Sheriff Steve Freitas. But a civil rights lawsuit brought against him, the county and the Sheriff’s Office by Lopez’s parents continues to wind its way through the justice system.

Earlier this year, Sonoma County asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2017 decision that Lopez posed no immediate threat to Gelhaus and that a jury should determine if the deputy used excessive force.

The shooting exposed deep rifts in trust between the Latino community and local law enforcement, with many police misconduct activists calling for Gelhaus to be fired and prosecuted for the shooting. It led ultimately to the formation of the county’s Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, set up by supervisors to monitor the Sheriff’s Office, participate in policymaking and perform outreach to the community.

The memorial park at the site of the shooting - in a neighborhood long recognized by the county as without green space - was the one other vision county officials and ?activists had in common.

“It’s about damn time,” said Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, whose 5th District includes the Moorland neighborhood. “This community has deserved a park for decades.”

Hopkins said the park wasn’t simply “government built.” She said it was the product of community leadership and activism.

“It wouldn’t have happened without them,” she said, adding that she hoped today’s ceremony honors the “blood, sweat and tears that the community poured into this park.”

On Thursday morning, Hal Libbey, a viticulture adviser who volunteers with the park’s community garden, watered some of the plots that are being rented to local residents. Libbey said the garden will be used as a teaching resource for the local community.

“That garden over there, that’s Andy. This beautiful park is now Andy,” he said, voicing hope the new public ground would nurture the neighborhood around it.

“It’s better to get your hands in the ground to figure out how things are grown,” he said.

In the days leading up to today’s official opening, the park’s unifying spirit could be seen among the three men who worked to complete the Mesoamerican pyramid-like memorial on the east parcel, near where Lopez died.

Steve Rasmussen, a landscape architect who helped design the park, Frank Saiz, a member of the activist group Justice Coalition for Andy Lopez, and Scott Wilkinson, a project manager for Regional Parks, worked with drills, chisels and mortar installing hollow glass blocks into the memorial structure.

Inside each glass block, people placed photographs, letters and other items honoring Lopez, who lived in Moorland Avenue home less than a mile from the park and had attended Cook Middle School.

“That’s the spirit that created the park, so we want to keep that spirit present,” Rasmussen said.

“It’s surpassed my expectations,” said Saiz. “We didn’t know how much of this was going to be funded by the county.”

Major funding for the $3.7 million construction project came from various county funds, plus the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, and the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s Housing-Related Parks Program.

Wilkinson, taking a break from work on the glass blocks this week, called the park’s creation “an exhausting and challenging and exciting process.”

He and others voiced hope the small park, born out of tragedy, would symbolize something greater, perhaps about healing and cohesion, for the wider community.

“I’ve developed friendships and relationships with people during this process that are meaningful,” Wilkinson said.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.