"When there was no alcohol in their blood, they were nice, both of them"

By Brandon Stahl Fergus Falls Daily Journal
Gabino Pacheco said he had never had anything like it happen to him before: He was sleeping in his bedroom at around 2:30 a.m. when his roommate, who had been sleeping on a futon in the living room, ran in to wake him up.

"He said Miguel came downstairs and said, 'I have to go,'" said Pacheco. "He said [Miguel told him], 'I just killed Ernesto.'"

Ernesto Carmona Matos, 24, was allegedly stabbed and murdered by Miguel Alejandro Ramos Rivera, 23, on Sunday morning at a house on 40981 Highway 59, just south of Pelican Rapids, almost directly across from Lake Region Electric Cooperative. Tuesday morning, Rivera was charged with murder in the second degree in Otter Tail County court.

The alleged perpetrator and victim had been renting the two-bedroom house along with three others, each working at the West Central Turkey plant. Rivera and Matos lived upstairs, sharing essentially the same bedroom, sleeping on mattresses in a room separated by a wall.

Pacheco said the two were quiet and kept to themselves when sober, but would often get in fistfights when they were drunk. They fought so often that Pacheco even said he warned them that they shouldn't be living together.

"When there was no alcohol in their blood, they were nice, both of them," Pacheco said through an interpreter, Florencio Barragan, who owns the house and rents it out. "But on weekends, when they started drinking, they were violent."

Rivera and Matos were Guatemalan immigrants who moved to Pelican Rapids in December, Barragan said, and moved into the house on March 15.

Barragan, who also works at the turkey plant, said the two moved to town "like anybody else -- for the money."

In Guatemala, they were regularly paid $9 to $10 a day. They could almost make that in an hour at the turkey plant, he said.

Rivera and Matos worked on a cleanup crew at the plant and most often spoke in a regional dialect that the others living in the home didn't understand, Pacheco said.

Their bedroom was sparse after investigators removed a mattress and other evidence from the home, left with only several beer bottles, a dresser, clothes, an electronic keyboard and a large boom box in Matos' side of the room, decorated in scarves and faux flowers.

They played that radio so loud that Pacheco said he often could hear them fighting, which is what he said happened early Sunday morning.

Pacheco said he was later told that the two were arguing over money.

When his roommate ran in to tell the others about Matos, another roommate ran to a neighbor's house, who called police.

Rivera was arrested about seven hours later without incident after he was found walking down a township road. He has been held in Otter Tail County jail on suspicion of homicide.

Another man at the home, Elmer Morales, was arrested for being in the state illegally, said the Otter Tail County Sheriff's Office.

Pacheco said that despite the homicide, he and his roommates will continue to live in the house.

"[What happened] has nothing to do with us," he said. "I like it here. It's quiet here."

Most say race had nothing to do with incident
By Brandon Stahl, Fergus Falls Daily Journal
When the regulars gathered at the large round table Monday morning at the Rapids Cafe, the topic of conversation was centered on the murder the day before.

"It's all they've been talking about," said Misty Rhodes, a server at the cafe. "One of the guys was saying that [the alleged suspect] was 'at my house asking for a ride out of Pelican.

'"In a small town of 2,374, news of a homicide can rock residents such as Darla Schultz, a cook and dishwasher at the restaurant.

"We've never had anything like this before." What worries her, she added, "is just walking down the street."

"Before it was a friendly town and everyone knew everyone," she said. "Now you just keep to yourself. It's getting to be like the big cities. And I don't like that."

Pelican Rapids, which last had a murder committed in 1981, isn't a town that gets attention for violent crime, but instead for its vast diversity. Thanks in large part to the West Central Turkey plant as well as several area churches, Pelican Rapids Police Chief Scott Fox said the town's residents are comprised of ethnicities ranging from Hispanic, Somali, Sudanese, Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Kurdish, Bosnian and Russian.

But it's also a town that's mostly white -- about 78 percent, according to the 2000 census.

As Fox said: "We're basically a Scandinavian town, just like Fergus Falls."

The gulf between the races was a topic many in the town weren't comfortable directly addressing Tuesday, worried about negative attention they have received in the past could be misconstrued again in the wake of Monday's murder.

"You always hear the downside of living in a multi-cultural community," said Lee Brenna, who works at the Park Region Sports Shop, a bait and tackle store.

But there's a positive side that he argued doesn't get noticed: "The diversity culture in Pelican Rapids prepares our youth for the future, no matter where they go."

Others portrayed the culture of Pelican Rapids in a decidedly less favorable light. Asked if he was worried about his community, one man playing pool at the Sportsman's Recreation Pool Hall and Cafe said he wasn't.

"With all the foreigners, it's kind of expected almost. Those people are used to knives," said the man, who refused to give his name.

Added another man, who also refused to give his name: "We've got a lot of nationalities in town. Some don't seem to get along. As long as they don't get along with each other, that's the main thing, I guess."

Fox called statements like those "ignorant."

"They know nothing about the people that live here," he said.

Instead, Fox said the community lives together with relatively few problems, with "the typical kind of crime you would find in a town of 2,500."

"We don't have an ethnic problem in Pelican," he said. "To me, this isn't a racial issue .... it's just one person that committed a violent act toward another."

Pelican Rapids City Administrator Don Solga said his town offers education programs and celebrates its diversity, with events like the upcoming International Friendship Weekend on June 24 and 25.

"We do things to try and educate the different cultures about each other and to try and get everyone in the community to try and learn more about each other," Solga said. "Education breaks down the barriers."

Which is why most people, when asked for their reaction Monday, said it shock and sadness.

"Someone was murdered in our community," said Brenna, "and it makes all of us feel bad regardless of the nationality of who it was."

• (Look out my office window and you see the now famous white house through the trees, just across the invisible city limits. Who knew Ernesto Carmona Matos? Who will mourn him? Faux flowers is all there will be. Even in a town this small we not only don't know our neighbors, now we will be afraid of them. As Darla says, "we will just keep to ourselves." Keeping to ourselves is not the answer. Welcoming the stranger still is.)