Miami, Florida: A 15 year-old boy named Michael Brewer fights for life, with most of his body covered with second and third-degree burns. Five teen friends, one of them a mere 13, doused Brewer with alcohol and set him afire after Brewer snitched on a bicycle thief. The boy who led the attack was Matthew Bent, the son of Dennis Bent, who has a history of criminality and violence.
Richmond, California: A 15 year-old girl was gang-raped for over two hours during a high school homecoming while a dozen students watched. Although most students carry cell phones, none of the witnesses called for help. Some used their cell phone cameras to take commemorative photos. Social psychologists have coined the term "bystander effect" to describe this gross indifference to basic humanity, as though the application of a scientific-sounding label could explain the inexplicable. (At least they didn't use the word "syndrome.")
Mendota, California: Four year-old Alex Christopher Mercado was playing outside his home when a 14 year-old neighbor lured him into the neighboring house, drowned him, then stuffed the body into the dryer.
St. Martens, Missouri: Nine year-old Elizabeth Olten was found murdered in the woods. Police have taken into custody a 15 year-old girl, the older sister of Elizabeth's friend. The murder was planned; the accused described her preparations in a series of disturbing Twitter messages (recently removed). Commenters on a number of sites (including this one) have identified the accused as Alyssa Bustamante, although the name does not appear in press reports. In a Myspace blog entry dated December 14, 2008, Alyssa wrote a story which described a vicious assault on a "sweet, innocent young child" of eight named Elizabeth. Her YouTube profile lists "killing people, cutting" under "hobbies."
Pascagoula, Mississippi: Teenager Darwin Wells was convicted on October 29 of shooting Michael Porter, a 44 year-old man who had stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. Darwin was 16 when he committed the senseless murder; three teenaged friends were with him.
Winnepeg, Manitoba: Two teens (unnamed in press accounts), one of them a "petite girl," have been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder after they plotted to open fire on students in an auditorium. They also planned to use Molotov cocktails. The pair made a pact to kill each other if one party tried to back out of the plan. During sentencing, the young couple told the court that they were sorry.
Pontiac, Michigan: Two 15 year-old boys -- Thomas McCloud and Dontez Tilman, were convicted of murdering two homeless men in the 60s. (Tilman participated in only one of the killings.)
Philadelphia, PA: While out walking with friends, teenager Marcquis Walker-Williams, acting on a whim, decided to "catch a body" -- i.e., throw a punch and run. Walker-Williams killed Kwok Wai-Ho, 69. (According to the Urban Dictionary, "catch a body" is slang for murder.) At sentencing, Walker-Williams told the victim's family "We're Christians."
Yucaipa, California: A 16 year-old girl named Bianca Becerra, who had recently lost her infant son to illness, attended a Halloween party, where she was stabbed to death by another 16 year-old girl. The suspect's name has not yet been released.
Wells, Indiana: Four young men -- three of them teens -- are charged with killing Justin Sprow last Wednesday. Sprow was driving on a rural road when the assailants used their pickup truck to force Sprow to come to a stop. The assailants then fired shotguns into the vehicle.
Garden City, Kansas: A teenaged boy named Joaquin De Anda has been found mentally competent to stand trial for the murder of Julia Quintana, 16. Before dying of strangulation, she had been raped and sodomized; the body was dumped in a trash bin.
Cedear Rapids, Iowa: Teenager Tim Reynolds has been charged with shooting 38 year-old Christopher Pearson in the stomach. The victim survived. According to one report, the two had "an exchange of words" before the shooting.
Midland, Michigan: Steven J. Pribbernow, 15, has been found competent to stand trial for stabbing and killing his 17 year-old adopted brother Justin. The body was found just outside the garage. Steven Pribbernow is also charged with attacking an adult male and two children, who had been taken from their biological parents because those homes were deemed unsafe.
Hamilton, Ontario: A 16 year-old, unnamed in Canadian press reports, received a 21-month sentence for participating in the vicious gang rape of a 15 year-old girl. It is instructive to compare that sentence to the situation presented in this video.
12 comments:
But why? Movies and video games? They are certainly more violent than they used to be.
Or...?
(Of course, there are millions of very fine young people...)
djmm
You might find these related essays of interest. I especially like this fellow's blog title: the power of narrative. Reality has been replaced with narrative...
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2008/03/bullied-terrorized-and-targeted-for.html
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2009/11/depraved-violent-and-indifferent.html
In this most recent essay, I found his parallel between the onlookers of the gang rape and the onlookers of the tasering of that young man who questioned Kerry very striking. He's connecting some important dots.
and...
Toronto, Ontario
- A jealous teenage girl and her teenage boyfriend conspire to kill another teenage girl. They do, right outside of her home on New Years Day. (The victim's parents are cops.)
- A 23-yr old woman is grabbed in the lobby of her apartment building and raped and robbed in the stairwell by 6 teenage boys.
It's bloody frightening.
And it feels like it's reaching the point of no return.
juststoppingby
Crime is much lower than a generation ago.
There has been an epidemic of youth violence since the 1980s. It peaked in the early 90s, but still continues:
Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General:
Summarizing our current situation:
We have a young generation which is incredibly violent, and staying that way.
They mar their flesh with grotesque body-piercings and tattoos.
They favor brain-damaging recreational drugs.
They think South Park is brilliant (see note on brain damage below).
They can't write a decent song to save their lives.
They pick crappy Presidential candidates--and fight dirty for them.
What a royal mess. Thank God there isn't a draft. I don't know how we'll take care of these young uns after the brain damage from cell phones kicks in.
You may be right Purple. I have heard of similar statistics. Violent crime is down over the last 20, 30 years. But we still have a problem here. Something is dreadfully wrong with some young people. I used to teach and couldn't even begin to relate to those kids. Not much was taboo with them, either. I think we are in the midst of some kind of mass mental illness. People are so extreme now, so unreserved, so willing to do anything. It is mind boggling. I think it is time for all Americans to just get back to the basics and leave this technologically advanced life style behind.
You just reinforced my hatred of and disgust with the human race, which, in my opinion, is a disease inflicted on the earth and the rest of its creatures. My friends and loved ones excepted, of course.
Jerome
Another station stop on the Instant Gratification Railway?
Don't pay off that two year old car, we'll add what you own onto your new loan. (forget that you will owe more than the combined value of both autos).
Want that house but blew your down payment? We'll finance a zero down mortgage! (and bundle your worthless paper with others and sell it to some unsuspecting investors).
Want your political philosophy or candidate to prevail? Lie, cheat, steal, it's all good to get them elected. (and end up with a Bush or Obama stinking up the joint).
Restraint, the forgotten virtue, parents aren't instilling in their children.
William Golding was on to something.
Joseph -- Im curious how did you pull this particular list? Was it as simple as Google News / teen + homicide? What time frame does it cover, about?
What kind of numbers are there on juvenile homicide over the last ten / 20 / 30 /100 years, any idea?
I personally call this what happens when adult society abandons boundaries on what the Almighty Consumer Advertising Dollar is allowed to target.
We now allows the product advertising vampire fully free access to juvenile minds in their elementary schools, kitchens, family rooms, sleep rooms and every imaginable entertainment venue.. every minute of every day of their conscious lives. No other civilized nation rolls so completely over for corporate consumer predation like that.
Developing minds know perfectly clearly when they have been abandoned to the tender mercies of the almighty machine. When we dont shelter them from predation, they know they have no value beyond to be stripmined for their pocket money, force-fed Coke PS2s and Miley Cyrus and jammed on into the consumer hopper to get ground up with the rest of us.
Alienation from the world is what a sociopath is all about.
On the other hand, violent children arent new. We could all really use some statistical context for this.
I blame Clinton.
I still think these cases are anomaly's.
Why not compile a list of police brutality? Especially with the use of Tasers?
Come on, let's be reasonable, Mr. Cannon. Every generation has it's share of scumbags. What, you don't think gang rapes happened in the 50s? My feeling is just that there weren't nearly as widely reported. Yes, there are violent kids now. There are also plenty of intelligent, hard-working kids who share the same values as the rest of us.
Post a Comment