Shootings in My Hometown

Two deaths in a quiet neighborhood and no answers about the senselessness of them ... these are my thoughts. The young man who menaced a woman is dead, and a detective rushing to help is dead at the hands of another police officer. The woman who called 911 is wondering if they would still be alive if she hadn't called.

I don't have time for a linguistic analysis of the newspaper articles right now, but I can't help but note that the young man is called "a man" with a knife, which I suppose technically he is, or rather was, but when you see his face, you know he was barely out of boyhood and probably in need of help. Our boys, my son and his neighborhood friends, but a year younger, are still in college, not grown men yet really. And they knew the fellow from town, had seen his knives, and had spoken to him in passing.

As the police entered his home, his father asked them not to kill his son. But his son, cornered in his own room, burst out of it with knives swinging at and threatening officers. Was there some other way to handle this? We will never know. But now two families are burying their dead, and there is a sense that it was all senseless.

An afterthought...
Whenever a young person is troubled, getting him or her help would seem the right thing to do, but it is not easy, especially if he or she is over 18. Parents are helpless to force their children into care, and the suffering child is likely to not seek help on his/her own. The rate of untreated depression among college students, for example, is near 66%. There is a wonderful organization called NAMI, which can be of help with information and which advocates for the mentally ill in public forums, such as legislatures.