Honoring Newman Corporal Ronil Singh by focusing on his life, not his death
I approached the house in northeast Modesto with dread on the day after Christmas 2018.
It must have been a happy place only hours before, and during the time leading up to the holidays — a safe, warm home to a young couple with their first child, a 4-month-old son. But now the home was weighed down with grief.
I don’t remember how I drew the assignment that day, as a Modesto Bee reporter, to try talking with the family of a dead cop. No one wants that job — approaching loved ones on the chance they might have something to share with a broader audience, only hours after he’d been gunned down on a dark Newman street 30 miles away.
Paulo Virgen Mendoza didn’t want to go to jail for driving drunk and having weed in his pickup, so he shot Newman Police Cpl. Ronil Singh four times, and fled. Authorities caught up to him 55 hours later as the killer waited for someone to spirit him away to Mexico.
On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to Singh’s murder, assuring he will spend his life behind bars. Without the deal, he might have faced a death sentence.
Singh was given no such opportunity to negotiate for his life. It slipped away as he lay on that cold Newman street, fellow officers initially unaware of his body because they didn’t see him in the dark.
With that life newly extinguished, it fell to me to describe it to others. So I approached the Singh home, without much hope.
What would you say, if your loved one had just been murdered? Whether the victim wore a badge and carried a gun doesn’t make much difference. Grief is grief.
I didn’t have to knock on the front door. Some relatives were outside as I walked up.
Thankfully, they weren’t short with me. They were kind and courteous, and sent word for someone inside to respond. He quietly explained that those gathered were the deceased’s in-laws, and they would prefer statements wait until Singh’s immediate family would arrive from Fiji, his homeland.
The story came together from other sources. An uncle described Singh on Facebook as his “family’s action hero,” and posted photos of Singh hunting and fishing, and with Sam, his K-9 partner, by a Christmas tree. Only two days before, Singh had posted photos of himself from a deep sea fishing trip.
Police chiefs in Newman, where Singh worked, and in Turlock, where he had started his career as a cadet, issued releases with glowing praise and heart-felt comments about police as “torch bearers and guardians.” An officer friendly to the press who had worked with Singh offered a memory. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown provided a statement, and ordered that flags fly at half-staff at the Capitol in Sacramento.
We learned more about the man behind the badge as the story went viral — that his goal of being an American policeman developed while watching “Cops” on TV in Fiji, that he loved a good prank, that he liked to wear an American flag.
Keeping alive memories of victims
Journalists don’t relish writing about tragedy and death. It helps knowing that our words can help others come to know victims to a degree, to see them as real people with feelings and families and dreams.
I have used the name of Singh’s killer exactly once in this column. That’s enough.
Too often, news coverage after a murder tends to focus on the murderer, for inescapable reasons. You can’t write about a manhunt, and the arrest, and the preliminary hearing, and the cases against accomplices, and various turns of the legal screw leading up to trial or plea bargain without naming the accused.
The challenge is keeping alive the memory of those lost — in this case, a fun-loving, adventure-seeking, peace-keeping dog owner, husband and young father.
May we long remember Ronil Singh.
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 6:22 AM.
