When there is a violent crime, nobody wins - Athens Daily Review

Over my journalism career since 1968, I have been informed of many crimes in the early stages of their investigation, most through information I received from law enforcement.

It was in 1995 that I reported all the criminal activity given to me by law enforcement for the Pasadena Citizen, located in a Houston suburb on the ship channel. I have reported crime for many other newspapers, as well, including those located in Deer Park, Stafford, Baytown and Wagoner, Oklahoma.

Every day, I would hear of people assaulting others that they knew or didn’t know. Some were too doped up, or in such a drunken state that they couldn’t even remember committing the crime.

Some were just so angry, whether justified anger or not, and took it out on their victim physically. Many of these were in a home, in which a man either beat his wife or killed her. So sadly, one of two parents perhaps, for whatever reason they thought they had, beat or killed one or all of their children.

Perhaps you have been victim to a crime involving assault. Obviously, it is something you will never forget, and will hold it in the back of your mind until the day you pass on.

Back when I was 18, I had moved to Houston. And, yes, as a young foolish man, living many miles from my parents, I did things I had never done before, some a little immature. But they were never, ever violent.

I did, however, living in a town that had a high crime rate, witness some that were just horrible.

I well remember one night that I was sitting at a well-known drive-in restaurant on South Main Street in Houston, just a couple of miles southwest of downtown. It was dark outside, but the ceiling where the cars parked was lit up, and you could see anything that took place across the fairly small parking lot.

I noticed during one particular visit there, as I was eating dinner, that a carhop was walking toward a pickup truck on the lot.

For those of you too young to understand what a carhop is, it is a person, usually a woman, who delivers food orders to cars at a drive-in restaurant.

This one was a woman, who when she got to the pickup driver’s window, hooked the food platter down on the door, as usual.

It was then that a hand went through the open window with a pistol in it. And the man holding the weapon pulled the trigger.

She went to the ground, struggling on the parking lot pavement. Then, the shooter got out of the pickup, stood above her, and fired five more shots into her body.

He then got back into the pickup, and burned his tires exiting the parking lot.

Many people were screaming, and getting out of their cars to check out what had happened. I also went up to the body.

Soon, Houston Police quickly entered the parking lot, along with an EMS vehicle, just in case it wasn’t too late. But it was.

I read the Houston Chronicle the next day, finding out that the man had felt something about what he had done, and had traveled to some bridge, and jumped off into a dry creek, attempting suicide. There was never a reason publicized for why he did what he did, either in the parking lot or at the site of the bridge.

He lived through it, and has probably spent the rest of his life in prison.

In another circumstance, in the much smaller city of Wagoner, Oklahoma, there had been a murder of a woman getting up one morning in her home. She was shot in the bedroom.

The next day, her husband and her mother, came together to my office to speak about the offense, both crying, and hugging each other, and wishing something could be done to find the killer. At that time, law enforcement was still in the investigative stage. The two people who so loved the woman must have stayed in my office for about two hours.

The next day, I was so shocked. The police department called me, and said the husband who had been in my office had gone to their office the next morning, and confessed to the killing.

I took a photo for the front page of the man being led in handcuffs to the Wagoner County Jail.

So what do people get out of this? No matter how reasonable the act seems to them at the time, nobody, including the perpetrator, wins anything at all. Everyone loses.

Everyone! That includes the person that was murdered, and their greatly saddened family.

Now, the exception might be killing a person who is threatening your life, or definitely the lives of your spouse, or your children.

But, when it is not for those reasons, the person who loses everything in life, also includes the person that commits the crime. Whatever their reason for what they did, they will probably never physically or mentally be free.

They will also hold knowledge of what they had done for the rest of their life.

They may have had what they believed was a great reason for doing it at the time. But, after incarceration for only a brief time, they know that this probably wasn’t a good idea.

Now, this is not a sermon, but instead, looking for something better in life before the act of violence or murder is a better idea. And, that includes communicating with your Maker. He is also your Savior. Again, this is not a sermon, so I will leave it at that, at least for now.

Never act before you think. Always think before you act. Consider the fact that what you do, whether good or bad, will in some way affect the world that you live in. Certainly, it will affect you.

It’s your decision. Be absolutely sure you make the right one.

Jeff Riggs is Associate Editor of the Athens Daily Review.

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