Why does everything have to become a racial issue? In Connecticut, activists are claiming that the Cheshire home invasion is getting more media attention and law enforcement as well as Governor Rell are only paying attention and enacting new laws that the activists have been seeking only because the Cheshire family killed was white. If they’d been black, or if this had been inner city rather than suburbia, much less would have been done in the coverage and the aftermath.
No, I don’t think so. I think the fact that two men entered a private living space of a family at three in the morning, terrorized them for six hours, beat the father and left him in the cellar, raped an 11year-old daughter, raped and strangled the mother, tied the 11 year-old and her 17 year-old sister to their beds and then set the house on fire knowing the three still alive were likely to die in the fire, well, I think that’s what’s shocked the town, the state, and the nation. And, the fact that the two men responsible were parolees is likely what spurred Governor Rell to institute legislation regarding parole.
In New Jersey, four students in Newark were lined up against a wall, robbed, and shot execution-style in the head. Three died, one young woman survived gunshot wounds and stabbing to aid police in identifying the men who attacked them. The victims were aged between 18 and 20, just starting out their lives, planning on college. The men who killed them were looking for money, ended up with very little. And three young people are dead for a couple dollars. The victims were black, but what does it matter–this too was as horrifying a crime as what was done in Cheshire.
Senseless murder of good people, black and white doesn’t matter; these crimes are getting the attention because the victims were innocently going about their lives with no expection of their lives ending in such violence that day.
Any life lost, especially in such a way at the hands of another, is traumatic and sad. The number of victims in these two cases, their ages, their innocence is what creates more attention.
Personally, I don’t care if they were purple, they didn’t deserve to die like that and I am heartbroken and grieve for their families.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology