Trying to make sense of the unexplainable
There is a phrase we’ve been hearing a lot when faced with looking for the reasoning behind the commission of certain crimes: “It’s in the water,” because there really is no reasonable explanation. For example, how do you explain the shooting of Brooklyn Rouse? The 21-year-old was going about her business of delivering pizzas on a day she was supposed to have off. Little could she know that one of those calls for pizza was actually a trap to lure a deliverer to a robbery. The trap worked, and Brooklyn was shot in the head in the process, and for what?
What did 26-year-old Alisha Genva Wilson, now charged with aiding and abetting in armed robbery and attempted murder and possessing a gun, hope to gain? Why did 19-year-old Jacob Elijah Miller, the alleged gunman, shoot Brooklyn multiple times? How much money did they think a pizza delivery person carried? Both Wilson and Miller had probably never heard of the famed bank robber Willie Sutton, who when asked why he robbed banks replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Ergo, it’s not with pizza deliverers. Fortunately, Brooklyn survived her run in with two people who don’t have the mental capacity to figure out a simple risks and rewards ratio. Hopefully, Brooklyn will fully recover from her injuries, but the alleged perpetrators, if convicted, won’t recover from their attack of stupidity for the rest of their lives.
The same disease hit Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper and Brittany Covington, all 18 — as well as Tanishia Covington, 24, in Chicago. The quartet beat, battered and racially taunted an 18-year-old mentally-challenged youth. Then, so proud of their work, they posted a 28-minute video on Facebook. What did they think would happen to them? Of course they’ve been arrested and charged with committing a number of offenses including hate crimes. What is their defense attorney supposed to do? Their own video is all the evidence the prosecution needs to send them away for a long, long time. The world will be better for it.
What was on the minds of Dakota White, 17, of Perry, and Brandon Warren, 18, of Houston County. They are charged with the murder of Sam Poss, 18, back in October. Warren has plead not guilty. While most of the details are unknown, what is known, brought out at a hearing for White where bond was denied, is chilling. The two initially planned to kill a 12-year-old before choosing Poss. They struck a suicide pact with each other. The pair allegedly wanted to know what it would feel like to kill someone. May we ask, why if they were planning on killing themselves, too?
These instances are by no means outliers. Our jails are full of people who can’t think through simple decision making. And when they do make a decision they end up making drastically bad ones that have life-altering implications that they will never recover from.
We can’t blame law enforcement on this uptick in stupidity. Criminals have never been the brightest of blubs, however, many of the old school criminals knew their math. They understood how much time they would receive if they pulled off an armed robbery rather than just pretended to have a weapon and they generally knew that shooting a police officer was a death sentence. Today’s criminal doesn’t think logically.
We may be reaping what we’ve sown. We have people running the streets raised by the glowing orbs of idiot boxes where all sorts of entertainment can be found. Pulling the trigger in a war game, we imagine, is not much different than pulling one in real life if the mind of the person has been dulled by drugs either personally ingested or used by their birth mothers. Yes, it’s in the polluted water of society. Rev. Ronald Terry’s words from 2009 continue to ring true: “We have raised a generation of young people that is lawless, godless and fearless.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Trying to make sense of the unexplainable."