Prying the Lid Off 45-Year-Old Cold Case
The last words Paul Ornelas would say to his brother John were, “I’ll be back.”
As it happened, he never was.
The body of Paul Anthony Ornelas was found early the next morning along the railroad tracks near San Marcos High School. The back of his skull had been bashed in. Blunt force trauma with a blunt object. The wound was so deep, it took three inches of cotton to fill it.
Paul Ornelas was 15 years old at the time of his murder. His brother John was just 14. All this happened a long time ago — June 21, 1975, to be exact.
Like a lot of murders, this one never got solved. Early this April — 45 years later — the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office issued a press release announcing that it had officially reopened the Ornelas murder case. Press releases like that don’t happen every day. In fact, they never happen at all.
Over the years, Ornelas became persistence personified, contacting each of the successive detectives assigned to solve his brother’s murder. “They always told me there were things they couldn’t tell me,” he recalled. “They said it might jeopardize the case.” Ornelas got that. But like many murder victims’ family members, he got tired of all the waiting. “I was getting frustrated,” he said.
Several months ago, Ornelas got a call from Detective Matt Maxwell of the department’s Major Crimes unit. He announced that he’d be taking over the case. “He said, ‘John, you’ve been patient for all these years,’” Ornelas recalled. “‘I don’t know how I would have acted.’”
John Ornelas is third-generation Santa Barbara; he grew up in the Ladera Apartments on the city’s Westside, the youngest of eight kids. His brother Paul was exactly 12 months older. They did everything together. The family’s path was not easy. Ornelas’s father left early on. His mother, Pauline Ornelas-Jaramillo, worked as a certified nursing assistant first at Santa Barbara’s old General Hospital and then later at an acute care nursing home. She had her hands full. John’s older brother Vincent was drafted into the military and spent two years in Vietnam. That was rough on the family, but he made it home okay. Vince would later become a martial arts specialist, teaching cops and Sheriff’s deputies the fine points of controlled mayhem, and then worked in juvenile hall for the Probation Department.
For John Ornelas, it all remains very much an open question. He’s still not sure what got the case reopened, but he is hoping it’s because the detectives have something. If they do, they still can’t tell him. But he’s confident they mean business.
Forty-five years ago, he noted, there was no social media. Now the echoes are coming back on him with a vengeance. “I can’t believe this is happening. Now I’m getting caught up in the moment all over again,” he said. “Man, it was crazy.”
To keep himself grounded, John Ornelas prays. “I just ask God to give me the strength and courage to keep going so we can see justice for this family.”
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Madame Web recommended Spider-Man ask Shang-Chi for martial arts training to make up for it, creating a brand new martial art, the Way of the Spider, combining their mutual fighting styles. It looked like this.
This included his experience of being bullied, watching Captain America in the field and his own acrobatic experiences.
When his Spider-Sense returned he was able to combine the two, always handy when a superhero gets posessed by a bad guy. Happens so often.
But it seems Spider-Man has been a little lax on that front of late. The new Shang-Chi Vs The Marvel Universe series launches today, with Spider-Man possessed (told you) and turnial bestail to attack Shang Chi. But it looks like he may have the chance to learn from Captain America in action again very soon…
Texas security guard unleashes martial arts moves in restaurant brawl
Viral video shows security guard throwing wild martial arts moves in Dallas bar
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A Texas security guard is going viral after being caught on camera unleashing a series of martial arts moves against a man and a woman at a Mexican restaurant.
The long-haired guard — who appeared to be armed and wearing a protective vest — was filmed Sunday throwing a series of right hands at a man who backed away, and adding a Muay Thai-style kick to the body for good measure.
A blond woman tried to intervene in the Dallas fracas, stepping forward to hit the guard with her phone in her hand — just to get punched in the face in return, the video shows.
After a pause as another man tries to step in the way, the guard runs out the door after the initial man who had been kicked and punched.
How CBS’ Martial Law brought martial arts star Sammo Hung out of acting retirement and into Hollywood
Sammo Hung Kam-bo became one of the most well-known Hong Kong performers in the US in the late ’90s thanks to the success of martial arts show Martial Law
One of the main factors behind the CBS show’s success was the quality of the fight scenes, choreographed by teams specially brought over from Hong Kong
Sammo Hung Kam-bo starred in Martial Law, a martial arts show created in the US but choreographed by Hong Kong teams. Like many Hong Kong stars and filmmakers in the late 1990s, he wanted a career in Hollywood. He moved to Los Angeles looking for directing work, and had not considered acting in the United States because he could not speak English fluently.
Hung, though, became one of the most well-known Hong Kong performers in the US thanks to the success of Martial Law – a CBS television martial arts show in which he played a Shanghai detective on loan to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
The series ran for two seasons and 44 episodes between 1998 and 2000
