Add Dolores Carbonilas-Yigal to the list of Filipino-Americans to fall prey to massive American gun violence. The 53-year old from Cebu province was one of the 14 who died in that senseless gun attack on an immigration education center last Friday in Binghamton, N.Y.The students of varying ages and ethnicities were learning English on their road to citizenship and truly understanding what it means to be American. Unwittingly, they were to meet it head on. America has become a gun-infested nation plagued by senseless gun violence.

These things are difficult to comprehend. More so if you are Omri Yigal, the bereaved widower, who met his wife the old-fashioned way—as a pen pal. Dolores Yigal recently arrived from the RP and was learning English in order to get a job working with children.

Yigal’s violent death comes just about ten years after the death of another Filipino American, Joseph Ileto, a 39-year-old postal worker in Los Angeles who was gunned down in August, 1999. Ileto’s shooting was only slightly more easy to comprehend. His death was due to the unadulterated hate that emanated from a white supremacist named Buford Furrow, Jr.

On Aug. 10, 1999, Furrow, long a member of an established white supremacist group, shot Ileto on his way to attacking a day care center at the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center.

Prosecutors said Furrow told investigators that Ileto was a “good target of opportunity” to kill because he was a nonwhite and worked for the federal government.

Furrow has expressed no regret for any of his crimes and plead guilty to all counts against him in 2001.

But even with Furrow in prison for life, the beat goes on.

If the white supremacist Furrow represents the anti-diversity idea of death to all non-whites, ten years later we find a new twist.

Omri Yigal and the other immigrant victims in Binghamton last week were murdered by one of them, a fellow immigrant from Vietnam identified as Jiverly Wong AKA Voong.

Who needs white supremacists fearing competition from non-whites? Hate? That’s so old school. This is the new reality, where there’s plenty of competition among everyone in the new moderrn and diverse America.

And plenty of guns to take out your frustration in the middle of an economic downturn.

The interview shows the difficulty in communicating when English isn’t the language of your source. In the end, it only reveals how with its vast resources the mainstream media doesn’t really know what to do with what it gets.  The interview was painful and awkward, and given the time constraints of live  TV, barely got skin deep on this story.  It needed a translation that only the ethnic media could provide.

But hey, it’s TV. As Don Henley wrote in “Dirty Laundry,” his rock lullaby to TV news, “Get the widow on the set…”

Of course, Meredith Viera was appropriately sensitive and gently probing in her interview of a woman identified only as “Nga.”  Not revealing her name nor location was the price TODAY paid for the exclusive, but identity has been everything in the story. Is it Jiverly Voong or Wong? By allowing Nga her anonymity, they essentially made the story somewhat generic.

This could be about any Asian American immigrant with poor English who had an extremely bad day.

Nga did contradict the notion by some that the acts by her loner brother were predictable. She  said the family members were “surprised and shocked to hear the news.”

When asked if her brother was depressed about losing his job last year, Nga said,”No, I didn’t see that he was very depressed from losing his job. And he was very frustrated from his English speaking skill.”

Clearly, she said he wasn’t depressed. But her diction contradicts that. What did she mean? Live TV doesn’t get at that.

But then came the most revealing answer.

“He didn’t share any of his past and feelings and he kept all his frustrations inside and didn’t want to share with anybody in the family,” Nga said. “And I think this pressure increased his frustration and I’m so sorry that he acted in such a terribly inappropriate way.”

Nga also said she was upset with a police investigator’s use of the words “coward” and “selfish”  to describe her brother. “(The investigator) did not know him. I can see my brother lost his rational thinking. Of course, I’m upset to have him thought of in that way.”

In the end, what realy was accomplished was a way for the family to express its sorrow. “My family was very shocked to hear the news. They were very sorry for all the victims and their families.”

That doesn’t get to why, he did it.  But Nga’s answers hint at what is common for many Asians.

We keep things inside. We don’t share, nor seek help. When there’s a transgression, we don’t express.  In some cases, we don’t know how. So we endure. We don’t fight.  We take it, and take it , and take it.

And then it’s too late.