Ex-girlfriend of suspect who opened fire on Lakewood police agents talks about his troubled past: "The system failed"
In the month-and-a-half before Gabriel Garcia shot four Lakewood police agents, killing 33-year-old Nick Graham, he was in and out of prison.
Garcia was released from prison on Sept. 23 of this year but was arrested just five days later for skipping parole.
He was held at the Broomfield Detention Center until Oct. 20, and less than three weeks later, Lakewood police say Garcia shot and killed Lakewood Police Agent Graham's life. Three other officers and a bystander were injured in that shootout, and Garcia was killed by police.
Garcia's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child tells CBS Colorado the cycle of crime, prison and skipping parole is not new for Garcia.
"This whole system needs to change," said Christina Slafter. "How many offenses need to occur before somebody is automatically no longer eligible to be let out?"
Slafter was 16 when she started dating Garcia.
"He was just this fun guy that wanted to just hang out and party, and everybody knew him as the big teddy bear," Slafter said.
As teens, they had a son together, but Slafter says their relationship was rocky. She says her grandmother had a protective order against Garcia at one point.
"There were a couple of altercations I would classify as domestic violence between him and me," Slafter said.
She says Garcia never had much contact with their son.
"I tried my absolute best to try to make some sort of connection between the two of them, but he just either said he was going to show up and then he wouldn't show, or he'd make excuses. It was pretty obvious he just was not interested in being a dad," Slafter said.
Eventually, Slafter married someone else and moved out of state with her son while Garcia continued a cycle of crime.
"He was stealing. He was breaking into cars. He got caught for possession, and it just kept growing and growing and growing from there," Slafter said. "He never learned. He made the same mistakes over and over and over."
In 2019, Garcia was sentenced to 10 years in prison for attacking an Adams County deputy. But Slafter says he was let out on parole in 2022. That was the last time she and her son spoke to Garcia.
"He spoke to [my son] over video chat for probably a couple hours, and that was really great because [my son]'s never gotten that interaction with him before," Slafter said. "He goes, 'Honestly, it was great talking to him, but I can't be the father that he needs me to be.' He says, 'I don't want him to have a single bad memory of me. I don't want him to remember me in the condition that I'm in right now. So I think it's best if I walk away.'"
Last week, Slafter got a call that Garcia was dead, accused of killing Graham and shooting three other officers.
"It's absolutely devastating and heartbreaking because not only, you know, did he lose his life, but he killed a father and a husband and a son and probably a brother, and he shot all these other officers and an innocent bystander," Slafter said.
Slafter's now 15-year-old son overheard the conversation.
"He just went into the other room and started crying," Slafter said. "Ultimately, he's just bummed out, and he's sad because he always had that hope of maybe one day he'll want to be a part of my life, and maybe one day I'll be able to have some questions answered about myself."
Slafter says Garcia battled mental health issues and got caught in a cycle of drugs, crime, and bad choices.
"I remember Gabe telling me about the physical abuse that his dad had towards his mom," Slafter said. "I know that he at some point was diagnosed with, I think it was schizophrenia, and he was heavily medicated for that. I know that he hated taking the medications."
She remembers the tender parts of him, which she sees in her son.
"Gabe was not bad to his core. You know, he wasn't born evil. He was just somebody that got wrapped up in the wrong stuff and just kept making bad choices and didn't learn from it," Slafter said. "They have a lot of similarities with, like, drawing. They're carbon copies of each other. They just, my son's just very gentle and loving and compassionate because I've raised him to be that way. But as far as, like, his interests when it comes to, like, video games and art, like the artistic side of him, that's very much so how Gabriel was."
Slafter says Garcia's criminal history should have kept him behind bars, and he should have had more supervision if released.
"As far as Gabe goes, the system didn't screw Gabe up. He did that himself by making the same choices over and over and over," Slafter said. "The system failed to protect the community. He had just attacked an officer in a K9 unit just a few years ago. You know, that should have been absolutely not. You are not being released... This really could have been prevented. There's no reason why he should have been let out," Slafter said.
Slafter's son is now 15 years old. She says she's raised him to be the opposite of his biological father. Slafter's husband is her son's father figure and has offered to adopt him. Slafter doesn't want her son to be connected to this tragedy.