May 5, 2009

Victim's friends remember her as 'beautiful person'

By Nick Halter
Wausau Daily Herald


Beanna Schneller


Breanna Schneller was a sweet girl and a good student who stayed out of trouble, say friends and others who knew her at D.C. Everest High School.

Her life revolved around her fiance, Sebastian Ramirez, and her friends said the two were madly in love and had a respectful relationship.

Her slaying Saturday in the apartment she shared with Ramirez and his brother came as a shock to those who knew her, and her friends can't figure out how or why it could have happened to the 18-year-old high school senior. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=76813598045" target="new" style="color:#72A440;">Friends create Facebook group to remember Breanna Schneller

"Breanna was one of those girls that was just kind of there and didn't cause any drama and try to start anything," friend Britany Lotharius said. "She wasn't ... an enemy to people."

What she was, her friends say, was an outgoing girl with a warm smile, an infectious laugh and a big heart.

"She's just a beautiful person," said friend and classmate Mitchel DeSantis. "She was a living angel, and now she is a literal angel."

Schneller started dating Ramirez during her sophomore year and he proposed the following year, said Lotharius, who became friends with Schneller during the eighth grade and was hired a couple of years later by Schneller's mother at the Plaza Hotel & Suites in Wausau, where Breanna also worked at the time.

Schneller started sleeping at Ramirez's home toward the end of her sophomore year, and by her senior year, she was fully moved in, Lotharius said.

Schneller worked as a hostess at El Mezcal restaurant in Rib Mountain, and Ramirez was a server at El Tequila Salsa restaurant in Rib Mountain.

The two had talked about some day opening their own restaurant, Lotharius said.

Schneller didn't do drugs or run with a rough crowd, nor did Ramirez or his brother, friends said.

She was a girl who had many friends but spent most of her free time with a select few, including Ramirez and his brother, her mother and a couple of girlfriends.

"People who saw her in the hall knew she was a nice person just because of the way she smiled," said friend and classmate Sara Tome.

Schneller's older brother and father lived in Minnesota, Lotharius said. Schneller's relatives could not be reached Monday, nor could Ramirez.

Friends said Schneller was excited about a July trip to Nashville, Tenn., where she would present a project she developed on child development that was selected as one of the best in the state.

Schneller's work earned her and 90 other Wisconsin students an opportunity to present their projects to the national career and technical student organization Family, Career and Community Leaders of America, said Diane Ryberg of the Wisconsin association of FCCLA.

"She was just a good student," Everest Principal Tom Johansen said. "She had good academic skills, she had no discipline problems at all, and as a bonus did very well in the competition she participated in."

Everest students were not in class Monday as the school took the day off for an unused snow day. The high school will make counselors and psychologists available today when classes resume, Johansen said.

"Like all circumstances like this, when students and staff have emotional issues, we will have guidance staff and psychologists in the building for the sole purpose to assist and help kids and adults through these circumstances," he said.

For many students, the event is sorrowing yet unifying.

"Everyone is shaken up ... but I hope it can bring our class of 2009 closer together," DeSantis said.

No Everest High School student has been a victim of homicide during the 20 years Johansen has been at the school, he said.

For Lotharius, the past few days have been a nightmare. The two had planned to hang out Saturday, but Lotharius said she was called in to work and had to cancel. The last time she saw her best friend was Friday morning at school.

Nothing then or during the months leading up to Schneller's death seemed different, she said.

"I'm still trying to pretend like it's all a dream," she said. "But it's not. It's hard."

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The hearse carrying Breanna Schneller’s casket leaves the funeral home Friday afternoon. (Corey Schjoth/Wausau Daily Herald)

May 9, 2009

300-plus pay respects to Breanna Schneller

By Nick Halter
Wausau Daily Herald

More than 300 friends, classmates and family members packed Peterson/Kraemer Funeral Home Friday in Wausau to mourn the loss of Breanna Schneller.

Surrounding those people were poster boards pasted with scores of photos illustrating Schneller's progression through life. The posters could just as easily have been propped up at a graduation party for the 18-year-old D.C. Everest High School senior, but instead they served as a chilling reminder of a life cut short.

Schneller was found slain the afternoon of May 2 in the Wausau apartment she shared with fiance Sebastian Ramirez and his brother Hugo. Police have not made any arrests in the case.

Loved ones on Friday shared their stories about a normal teenage girl who loved to shop, listen to music and dance, and whose life ended with a horrific and unexplained act of violence.

By all accounts, Schneller was not a typical teen, but an extraordinary human being who touched the lives of everyone who knew her.

Hugo Ramirez read a poem he wrote and broke down in tears while contemplating the loss of the girl he already considered a sister.

"You are the one who brought life to our lives," he said.

Schneller was on pace to graduate in May, and friends said she wanted to go to college, with dreams of one day opening a restaurant with Sebastian Ramirez.

She was excited for a July trip to Tennessee to present a nationally recognized project she did on children for the career and technical student organization Family, Career and Community Leaders of America.

For many, the haunting fact that Schneller's killer remained at large prevented mourners from getting the closure that often comes with a funeral.

"If anyone knows anything, please, please help us put her to rest," pleaded one friend who spoke at the funeral.

http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20090509/WDH0101/905090460/1981

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When are we going to stop letting these criminals walk through revolving doors in our justice system all in the name of being politically correct. If they are ILLEGAL, DEPORT THEM. Stop plea bargaining with Illegals! Give them true sentences for the crimes they commit, let them to their time, then send them back to the country they slipped out of. I'm tired of them stealing Social Security numbers of innocent victims, so they can work illegally. Start arresting employers who hire these "Criminals".. there's no way in todays world employers, "don't know" they're hiring an illegal.

When the Democrats gave Illegal aliens amnesty back in the 1986, the first time 2.8 million illegals.. I knew it would open us up to the topic again, later down the road, & I knew it would open the flood gates to illegals pouring over our borders. Both happened, & now we've got 10 times the number of Illegals given amnesty in the 1986. Then our government in their rush to give more amnesty in 1994, quickly signed the Rolling amnesty bill gaving another 578,000 illegals amnesty...Then in 1997 we gave another, roughly 1,000,000 central American illegal aliens amnesty, after adding an extension to that rolling amnesty bill signed in 1994.. In 1998 another 125,000 Haitian's got amnesty with the passage of The Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act Amnesty.. In 1998, another 400,000 illegals claimed they should have been given amnesty under the first 1986 Amnesty bill, and of course they received their amnesty.. Then in 2000 the "Life Act Amnesty Act.. another Rolling Amnesty.. gave another 900,000 illegals Amnesty.. ANYONE else see a pattern??

In 2001, Mexico's President Vicente Fox began to lobby the United States to "regularize" the status of millions of illegal aliens from Mexico living in the United States. Both U.S. political parties, in attempts to pander to the Hispanic vote, speak of amnesties in various forms for illegal aliens.. So the stage has been set more illegals to be Pardoned by our government.. thus giving them free rein to suck up more of our financial resources (not that they have any trouble now doing it). These illegals get more in the way of government help then legal citizens, & I believe we have enough homeless, starving women & children, that we don't need to import them. And last but not least.. Lots of these illegals are criminals in their home countries. The Mexican President back in the 80's also said he was going to flood our country with his sick, his indigent, his criminal, & any other derelicts he could swing over here. He did exactly that not long after stating his threat, & now their here, & we get to take care of them, at a time when we're struggling to take care of ourselves.

Its time we stop giving Amnesty to illegal aliens who've broken our laws to get here, & broken laws to stay here. When they kill innocent LEGAL citizens, by DUI, or committing other crimes, they know the worst hing that will happen to them is they'll get 3 hots & a cot for the rest of their lives.. not to mention free health care (mental, dental, & physical care), room & board, access to a completely out fitted gym, with equipment i can't even afford, free clothes (I know not the most fashionable, but still.. they're clothes)..

We need to seal our borders tightly, & kick everyone who's here illegally out. Might be expensive in the beginning, but in the long run we save money... So whats the problem?!