It's easy to mourn the innocents.
We cry for the church caretaker killed for his scooter, for the young man fatally stabbed as he walks home from a bus stop chatting on his cell phone with his mother, for the young girl caught it the cross-fire of a someone else's dispute.
Senseless killings over trivial matters.
It's harder when the victim has a troubled past or was engaged in less-than noble endeavors. Louis Scott was one such young man. His mother contacted me last week to report on a vigil for her son, who was shot outside her house near Druid Hill Park. The victim had been convicted of drug possession and not convicted of twice trying to kill to people and sell drugs (photo is from a vigil held Saturday in the 2700 block of Parkwood Ave. It was taken by Monica Lopossay).
He was shot while talking to a woman near his car; his mother believes the girl knows the shooter and won't tell thepolice. She's angry that the detectives keep delving into her son's past -- he's innocent, she says, and they're being diverted from hunting the real killer and from pursing the real motive.
With so many killings, is this a victim we want to write about? It's not an easy subject, and I tried to explore that in Sunday's Crime Beat column. In retrospect, I'm not sure I succeeded (I urge you to read it before commenting; I can't get into all of the nuances and details here). The point is Scott's life -- the good parts and the bad -- are too complicated to be boiled down into an easy-to-understand cliche: