Cain Velasquez has publicly opened up unlike ever before regarding his jail time and what led to his 21-hour days in solitary confinement.
The Mexican-American is widely regarded as one of the greatest heavyweights in MMA history. His dominance in the division at his peak sets him apart from many and among the very best to ever do it. But his life took a turn for the worse when his son was allegedly abused during stints in daycare.
The news, as it would for many others, led Cain Velasquez to do something unimaginable. He sought help from authorities before taking matters into his own hands. His target: the suspect, Harry Goularte, and all involved.
“One night I was putting my son to bed, and he tells me the things that are happening to him at his daycare,” Velasquez said. “So I ask questions about what happened. He tells me. I ask him how long has it been going on. He says, ‘For a while.’ Right. So we do what we’re supposed to do: make a report, call the authorities.”
“They just get everybody’s- it’s documented down on what, you know, they go into process. I understand, like, there’s a heavenly realm, and there’s an earthly realm of laws that we got to abide by here on Earth. Okay. God’s laws are a little different, so you got to act accordingly. So we do things that are right. Correct. We do make the report, all that. We hear that the daycare, the son, who’s a 40-year-old man, Harry Goularte, was there. And that’s who my son told me that, you know, did all this stuff.”
Velasquez continued.
“I put the report in. They book him. He gets out on Friday in that same week. He gets out on Friday with no ankle monitor, nothing… Not back at the daycare; that daycare’s at a house. Just seeing my son and seeing all the traumas now come out, right? ‘Cause he’s disclosed it. So, seeing the hurt in him, breaking down, crying. He let it out. He would cry and all this. He’d been going there since he was, maybe, around 3 years old. And he told us at 4. So, I’m guessing pretty quickly.”
After an approach with the law failed to deliver a just reaction to the sickening events, Velasquez was done relying on others.
“We believed the daycare would be shut down,” Velasquez added. “We knew, but then the owner of the daycare, Patty Goularte, the mom, put out a mass email and kept us on it; didn’t take us off. Saying that, ‘Oh, no. Those allegations are false. That kid wasn’t even here that day.’ And saying that they’re going to be open on Monday, right? Which they technically can’t, but that f***ing just blew my mind.”
“We did all this, and it’s still not going to get stopped. What the f***. The system f***ing sucks; it’s broken. People don’t know what the f*** they’re doing. So, all these things start running through my mind… I just got to take a drive. I did have my gun on me at the time. And I had all these thoughts like, I wish I would see him. But what are the odds of that, driving out in public? I’ve never seen him out in public ever. Well, that day I saw him.”
Such a disgusting, undercriminalized action against anybody, especially children, would send any man down a dark path. Cain Velasquez felt that firsthand. He explained how quickly one reaction altered his regular family life to being entangled in an 11-hour gun chase and eventual 21-hour day of solitary confinement in jail.
“I lost it. Whatever you would say having it is, I lost it. I f***ing lost a will to live. Didn’t care about dying. Didn’t care- didn’t care about anything. I was in a different place at that moment. I wasn’t maneuvering in the parameters of what we call a normal life; I was in something else,” Velasquez stated. “I went through an 11-mile chase, shooting at them. And all of them were guilty, so all of them could have got it. Look at the photos now from the crime scene, their truck was shot up, man… I only hit the stepfather who was in on it. Hit him in the arm. It wasn’t- it could have been much worse… All of them could have [been hit]; that’s what I was going for.”
“11-mile chase and like two gun clips. There was like a stop there with police, during traffic. Innocent people could have got hit. I was trying not to, but I wasn’t here… I went into jail that night… I was there nine months before I got on parole. So, nine months. Solitary confinement.”
Velasquez later detailed why he decided against going to trial.
“Yeah, [I went to state prison], instead of trying to fight the trial. The judge we had was pretty good. I felt like he was solid. I already done some time for what I did; for the circumstances. Instead of going to trial, I just gave it up to the judge to make a decision, instead of doing the whole sh*t, you know?”
“I man up to my mistakes. I understood what I did was wrong. I could have hurt a lot of people. So, he gave me a total of five years, which everything else I’ve done added up for me to do one more year in state prison. So, I went to state prison.”