OUR NEIGHBORS to the north in Philadelphia are still coping with the aftermath of the fatal baseball bat beating of a 16-year-old high school student at the hands of other teens in a northeast section of that city, as well as the belated response of 911 operators.
On Veterans Day, Edward Polec had his skull fractured seven times as some of his attackers held him up to allow someone else to get a clean shot at him with a bat.
Philadelphia police have arrested several suspects and are continuing to investigate the murder. It was apparently a case of misguided adolescent retaliation for some earlier insult of a girl that did not involve the Polec youth.
The tragedy is reminiscent of the case of Expedito "Pedro" Lugo, the East Baltimore boy who received brain damage from a baseball bat attack near Patterson Park in 1991.
The Philadelphia story also has echoes for this region in the 1992 carjacking of Pam Basu in Howard County and the string of murders committed by Dontay Carter and John Thanos several years ago -- the kinds of chilling, sadistic acts of savagery that cause an entire metropolitan area to shudder, rush home and double-check the door locks.
Like the Basu case, the murder of Ed Polec also is shattering the myth of suburban serenity: the gang that battered to death the boy from a Philadelphia neighborhood was from suburban Abington Township.