When I first heard about the shooting at the car show on the West Hill of Kent I began to think about writing a column.
The story bothered me and I knew it would upset many who live in Kent and around the region.
My first reaction was to shake my head and wonder what the heck was going on in this world.
As I thought about it, I struggled trying to frame the story, to give it some reference. This is part of the world I write about, but, not a place I understand.
Driving home last night, I remembered a crime story I did early in my career that has stuck with me for more than 20 years.
A man came to me with a story about his father who had been murdered. I was writing the story for a magazine.
The father was murdered by three men in their 20s. He had hired one of them to do some work around his mobile home. The worker found the father collected coffee cans of silver dollars. The father was a little quirky and liked to bury the cans around his property.
One evening the worker and two of his friends started drinking and getting high on drugs and decided to rob the old man.
They went in and forced him to tell them where the cans were buried. I will spare you the details how they made him talk.
They completed the crime by hitting the father on his head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious, dousing him with gasoline and lighting the place on fire.
It took the son years to get the medical examiner and local law enforcement officials to call it a murder. It was originally listed as an accidental death from smoke inhalation with the fire caused from smoking in bed.
When I first came across the story I thought there must be some plot or nefarious reason the authorities were so negligent.
What I found, sadly, was simply poor work.
The son dogged the story until he was finally able to attract the attention of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The three had taken guns from the father and the son was able to persuade ATF to reopen the case.
The three were eventually prosecuted for the father’s murder and sent to prison.
It was at that point when I learned what violent crime does to people.
The son called me on a Saturday afternoon at about 4 p.m. to ask me about the article. It was not published at that time. I was a young writer and didn’t have much pull in those days and publishing the piece was slower than we had hoped.
I encouraged him and told him I would get it published and readers would know what happened and what he had done for his dad.
It was clear to me the son and the dad had a strained relationship over the years and the son was trying to repair something broken inside himself.
I received another call the following Wednesday morning from the son’s sister. She told me he had gone into his bedroom the night before and shot himself.
No suicide note was left. None was needed.
I learned that day how violence ripples out far beyond the crime scene. The hurt echoes through family, friends, the community and the country, and it is passed down generation after generation. Violence begetting violence.
I don’t have an answer or a solution, but I still carry an empty feeling every time I think about the son, his dad and the story.
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