There is no dispute that on a late-winter afternoon nearly three years ago, Patty and Paul Bender, along with Patty’s son Harry Goularte Jr., were running for their lives.

The three were driving through Morgan Hill while being pursued by former mixed-martial arts and UFC champion Cain Velasquez, who had already once shot at their pickup truck as the Benders picked up Goularte from his residence.

When the miles-long chase reached an end on Bailey Avenue, the three were bracing themselves as Velasquez rammed them with his own truck, then fired a volley of gunshots. By all accounts, the bullets were meant for Goularte, but Paul Bender was the one who was hit and wounded.

Last fall, Velasquez pleaded no contest to attempted murder and several other assault and gun-related charges in the Feb. 28, 2022, attack. A planned January sentencing hearing was pushed to March after Velasquez’s attorney balked at a proposed decades-long sentence by prosecutors.

But that pending legal conclusion has offered no relief to the Benders, owing to their unique intersection between criminal cases. Goularte is being prosecuted on a charge of sexually abusing Velasquez’s young son at the now-shuttered San Martin day care his mother ran, which is the presumed motive for the shooting. No trial date has been set in that case.

They lament that the attention devoted to Velasquez and his celebrity has skewed the public perception of them as victims. Instead of being vindicated, the Benders continue to deal with the fallout, including now living out of the area after being stalked and harassed by people supporting Velasquez and vilifying Goularte.

Cain Velasquez, right, appears for his arraignment with attorney Edward Sousa, who appeared with him, at the Santa Clara County Hall of Justice on Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, in San Jose, Calif. Velasquez, the former UFC champion based out of San Jose, was charged with shooting at a man accused of molesting his child. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) 

At one point early on, someone tried to firebomb the Benders’ home — which also housed the thriving day care business that Patty Bender once operated — by throwing a Molotov cocktail onto the property. It failed to fully ignite.

Effectively run out of town and scandalized, Patty Bender had to shut down a business that she ran for nearly four decades.

“I’ve done this job for over 40 years. I’ve never had to advertise. I’ve never had an issue or an allegation in all of those over 40 years,” Patty Bender said in an interview. “I’ve been involved in that community my whole life, since I had children.”

With Velasquez’s case heading toward finality, the Benders are shifting focus to their contention that the allegations against Goularte were under-investigated, a lapse that in their view set off the fateful sequence of events.

They are steadfast in proclaiming Goularte’s innocence, which they say is backed by a credible alibi and even video surveillance showing that he wasn’t at the day care when the sexual abuse of Velasquez’s son allegedly occurred. 

“Harry told them where he was. We had surveillance footage showing he was not there, and they said they would come back to get it,” Patty Bender said. “They never came back to get it, and then they never checked his alibi.”

“Our son is 100% innocent, and if our court system would allow us the opportunity to prove it, we could prove it,” she added.

Goularte’s attorney Steve Defillipis has argued repeatedly that the case improbably hinges on the testimony of a then-4-year-old child whose account was inconsistent. A trial for Goularte remains pending.

The Benders also remain frustrated with how they were kept abreast of the prosecution against Velasquez. They assert that over more than two years of court hearings, they never got ample chance to challenge decisions including Velasquez’s bail and his requests to travel during his supervised release.

It culminated with the plea agreement reached in August between prosecutors and Velasquez when they wanted all of the facts of the shooting to come out through a trial.

“We’re the victims here,” Paul Bender said. “And we’re being victimized again, not only by Cain, but by our own system.”

The sheriff’s office, which has changed administrations since the allegations against Goularte were first investigated, deferred comment to prosecutors. 

“Unfortunately, because this is an active case set to go to trial, we are unable to make any specific comments or provide insight into the investigation,” the agency said in a statement.

In a brief statement, the district attorney’s office defended its treatment of the Benders and while doing so recognized their unique circumstances.

“Respectfully, we are restricted in how we can respond because this couple is at the center of two pending criminal matters,” the statement reads. “Our goal … is to treat victims of crime with empathy and to provide them with clear, accurate information and strong advocacy. This was consistently and professionally done in this matter and will continue to be.”

The Benders say they can’t fully measure how much the conflict has upended their lives, but the closure of Patty’s Childcare leaves a void after its namesake shut down the business in the months after the shooting. 

The state was investigating since the allegations involved Goularte abusing the child at the day care, but she maintains that the business’s closure was her choice, in part driven by concern over the number of strangers who became fixated on the site and the threat they posed to her client parents and children. It also influenced their decision to leave.

Lindsey Salinas was the first newborn entrusted to the day care in 1985, when the business was in similar infancy. After having Patty as a caregiver, she said she continued to look to her for mentorship and guidance well into adulthood as she had a family of her own.

“It wasn’t just day care,” Salinas said. “It was families coming together. She would welcome everyone with open arms into her home, which was a staple of our events.“

“It hurts, it’s like my world has been shattered. For the safety of Patty and Paul, there has been very limited communication,” she added. “Her home was our safe haven. Now where are we going to meet?”

Patty Bender recalled how in recent months, she returned to the area to support one of her former day care kids being honored at a school homecoming event. Dozens of people packed the gym when they heard they might get what had become a rare chance to see her, and exhibited the bonds that the day care created between them.

“It was so nice to see them all. They all came over with hugs and kisses … it was huge to sit back and watch how much they took it upon themselves,” she said.

Even a respite like that reminds her of the criminal cases’ effect on the tight community she spent so long building.

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“They’re mad, and I tried to explain that we’re okay, but they don’t see it that way. They see Paul can’t use his fingers, that we’re not here and we have to drive to come to see them,” she said. “I thoroughly loved what I did. It was never really a job.”

Amy Smith, whose daughter attended the day care in the past decade, trusted Patty enough that they named her as an emergency contact long after they were clients. 

Smith said her daughter was looking forward to applying to work at the day care as she approached working age.

“They’ve been exiled. They’ve been presumed guilty before anything has happened,” Smith said. “To know the family and to be reading the articles, hearing things on social media, it makes me so sad and heartbroken.”

“It would be great if the community saw that and recognized it, and that they be allowed to return to the town they grew up in.”