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Wild Dogs |
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Copyright © 2001 by Dave Badtke |
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Two tragic events that happened last week tell more about us and our society than we care to know. I conclude this, because the first event has become so numbingly repetitious that news of it faded quickly after the dead were buried. There wasn’t even a clamor for increased gun control. The second event, reported by the Associated Press in the San Francisco Chronicle as some kind of bizarre anomaly, was buried deep in the paper, and subsequent news and analysis of the incident seemed to die before what was left of the dead boy was buried. In the first event, on Monday, March 5, Charles Andrew Williams allegedly killed two students and wounded eleven others, including a school security guard and a student teacher, with a .22 revolver at Santana High School in Santee, California, a suburb of San Diego. Williams may have had as many as forty rounds, and had it not been for the quick response by police, he probably would have fired off eight or nine more rounds, since his gun was loaded and cocked when he was arrested. The usual befuddled reports quickly followed the shooting. Our neighborhood isn’t like this, some people said. How could it happen here? Why didn’t those who heard Andrews’ threats take him seriously? But now, we say by our silence, it’s the week following the incident and it’s time to move on. If we are the country we believe ourselves to be, an economic powerhouse and democracy second to none in the history of the world, then why can’t we figure out how to deal with such incidents by implementing remedies that include increased gun control legislation that holds parents responsible for the actions of their children? Somehow, in a way that transcends politics and our Constitution, we seem powerless to do anything. But sometimes we do hold parents responsible. The day after the Williams’ shooting, in a second terrible event, ten-year-old Rodney McAllister went out to play in St. Louis, Missouri. He would never make it back home or to a friend’s house. Since the callous, superficial report by the Associated Press speaks volumes, I quote it at length: “The fourth-grader was found mauled to death by a pack of dogs Tuesday, bite wounds on most of his body, pieces of his clothing scattered around the park across the street from his home. The attack has horrified many in St. Louis and led to the jailing of the boy's own mother [emphasis added] for not keeping closer watch over him. “‘He was literally eaten by the dogs,'’ Police Chief Ron Henderson said. ‘They fed off of him.’ “Neighbors told police they heard the sounds of ‘suffering’' Monday evening, two hours after Rodney told his mother he was going to play basketball in the park, situated in a neighborhood of attractive middle-class homes as well as abandoned buildings and vacant lots. “Before Rodney's death, neighbors had complained about stray dogs in the area around Ivory Perry Park. Just a few days earlier, two officers from the city's Animal Control division had responded to the complaints. “‘We did not see anything,’ said Richard Stevson, Animal Control program manager.” I find this and the subsequent newspaper analysis, which also focused on the jailing of the mother, unbelievable. However unfit this particular mother was, to think that she was responsible for wild dogs eating her child is incredible. Certainly she should have known where her boy was, but her son didn’t kill anyone: He was killed by dogs. Why weren’t the owners of the dogs, if there were any, jailed, and why weren’t the city officials responsible for controlling the dog population jailed? More importantly, why weren’t the parents of Charles Andrew Williams jailed? After all, in his case, he was the wild dog who killed two and injured thirteen. And what about the parents of David Attias, who ran his car into a crowd at UC Santa Barbara, killing 4, wounding 1, and the parents of Klebold and Harris who killed themselves after killing 13 others in Littleton, Colorado. Why weren’t these parents jailed after their children, their wild dogs, killed others. No, you’re right. I’m getting carried away. The law narrowly defines parental and city responsibility when it comes to guns, cars and kids, and the law knows what it’s doing. Even though young Rodney McAllister was by all accounts one sweet kid, his mother had been in trouble and was obviously an unfit parent. After all, there were “abandoned buildings and vacant lots” in her neighborhood. There’s no way she should have let her little boy go outside to play basketball in St. Louis. She should have realized, as all good parents do in our great country, that to let a child out is to place him at risk of being eaten by wild dogs. |
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- Dave Badtke can be contacted at: www.CarquinezReview.com; Dave@Badtke.com; PO Box 763, Benicia, CA 94510; or by calling 707-745-5540.
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