Homicide too Close to Home

A week and a half ago, a little girl named Lizzy Shelley disappeared from a house across the street from my boy's school.  You probably heard of it.  It's been international news.  It was all over FaceBook first because something like this rarely happens this close to home, and my neighbors and friends really felt it.  Police suspected her uncle, and a short time later, he led officials to her body to avoid the death penalty.  The broken and bloody knife had already been found in the parking lot of my boy's charter school, where he's been since kindergarten.  Her body was found a very short distance from that same school. 

[source]

This case hits home for many reasons.  The first is geography.  I've been in that quiet neighborhood more times than I can count, have left my kids alone there.  It never seemed like the kind of place a little girl could be kidnapped and murdered. 

[source]

Another is, obviously, I am mother to an angel.  I lost my daughter under very different circumstances, but people who lose their children often understand each other on a level that those who have not lost a child can't.  As I say, it's great to have the empathy that comes with knowing what it's like to lose a child, but we don't wish our club on anyone because the dues are way too high. .  I can only imagine what kind of pain, devastation, and, of course, guilt this family is feeling not because they did anything wrong but because that's the human response.  If you can take responsibility, you can take control, which means you HAVE control and can prevent this kind of pain in the future.  It's illogical.  Things like this happen, and we don't have control.  But, at that point, you'll do anything mentally or physically to try to feel better. 

[source]

The third reason reason this hits close to home is we had to send my brother to prison for pedophilia.  He died of major medical complications right there in prison the month before my daughter passed away.  2010 was a monstrous year for us.  But this is the very thing we were afraid could happen if we let my brother stay in my parents' basement where grandkids could come and go, where there was an elementary a couple of blocks away.  One doesn't always get the kind of warning we did--finding pictures on my parents' computer--or know that 89% of pedophiles act out.  One can't always tell just by looking at your brother that he's dangerous. 

In all ways it's possible, this case hits closer to home than it does to most.  We don't know the family, but we feel their pain.  We don't know the brother, but we've seen shadows of that darkness in my own family.  We've never walked in that house, but some good friends of ours where we have walked live right next door.  It's a chilling thing when an event like this strikes so close to home.  I pray for that family, and I pray that no family has to undergo what this family has suffered.