Letter to the Editor

Spike in violent crime warrants more outrage

Friday, May 29, 2015

To the editor:

Like most people, I was appalled by the recent shooting incident at the county fair. To think that someone would be callous enough to shoot into a venue crowded with youngsters and their parents is incomprehensible to anyone of moral conscience.

Before long there was another mindless shooting that would take the life of a young man only 21 years of age.

On the same day the local paper reported his death, they also reported that a 22-year-old mother had been arrested for allegedly locking her three children, all toddlers, in a dilapidated house without food or water. She was also charged with carrying a prohibited weapon at the time of her arrest.

Now we have yet another shooting and the death of another youngster, only 17 years old.

A random shooting at the county fair, a young mother locks her three toddlers in a rundown house and abandons them and two young men are shot down in cold blood. All this happens in only a few weeks time and hardly a word of protest or condemnation from the community they lived in.

Where is the outrage?

When we consider the alarming level of crime and violence in our city, coupled with the horrendous loss of young lives, we should all be outraged. I believe the mayor should be among the most outraged.

The mayor, I believe, has a unique opportunity to use his good office and his good name to rally the community against what has almost become an epidemic of crime and violence.

All city leaders should be more involved and much more vocal in voicing their outrage to the levels of crime and violence than what they've been up to this point.

Surely we haven't become so inured to the pain and indignity of such events that we will only give a glancing look and turn a deaf ear when they occur. Where is the outrage?

Ron Evans
Blytheville