'That's not the boy I knew'
Friends stunned Marine is charged in Iraq murders

December 23, 2006
BY STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporter
Marine Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz was the kind of young man a mother wanted to see at her door, waiting to pick her daughter up for a date, according to people who know him.

Dela Cruz, 24, was always "yes, ma'am, no, sir."

He took pride in tending the landscaping as part of a school program at Wells Community High School.

"You wish you had a classroom full of guys like him," said one of his former teachers, Ted Dallas.

So the charges this week against him and three other Marines that they took part in the slaying of 24 civilians in Iraq have left Dela Cruz's friends and colleagues reeling. The attack came after a land mine exploded, killing one of the Marine's colleagues.

Dela Cruz was charged Thursday with killing five people and lying to authorities investigating the November 2005 incident in Haditha. He faces life in prison if convicted.

He is remembered fondly at Wells, in the 900 block of North Ashland, where he was a leader in the high school ROTC program.

"That's not the boy I knew," said the school's registrar, Betsy Garcia, of the charges against Dela Cruz. "That's not the boy I know. It's just so surreal."

Dela Cruz had long wanted to join the Marines and did just that after he graduated in 2002.

After he finished basic training, he returned to visit the school and noticed the bushes behind the building were in bad shape.

'A guy we could count on'
"He said, 'These plants look terrible.' I told him, 'We need you to come back to take care of them,'" Garcia said.

Dallas ran the horticulture program for the school when Dela Cruz was there. He said Dela Cruz never sassed him and was trusted with the keys to the equipment storage areas.

"I trusted him with everything," said Dallas, now the vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Dela Cruz came to the United States as a young boy from the Philippines and lived with a female relative in Chicago.

"A lot of our kids go into the military. It's a way to get out from under and make something of yourself," Dallas said.

Teachers and staff at the school never saw a trace of violence in him.

They usually just saw a smile on his face.

"He was a guy we could count on," Dallas said.

swarmbir@suntimes.com

Ellie