SubscribeSome stuff just makes me want to cry, pray
I didn’t intend to write about this today but the story of what happened to Michael Muchioki and Nia Haqq early Easter morning still haunts me. It is a sad and tragic example of what happens when good people encounter evil doers who have no regard for human life. The arrest of three 19-year-olds for their killings makes the story even more alarming.
Michael, 27, and Nia, 25, who had dated five years, celebrated their engagement with an evening of soul food, music and dancing with family and friends in New Brunswick, N.J. The couple partied until about 2 a.m., when they decided to call it a night. By 3 a.m., they were dead. Both had been shot twice just doors from their Jersey City apartment. Botched carjacking, police said then of the crime that mobilized law enforcement officials because of its depravity.
I was both heartbroken for their families and friends and outraged by what had happened to this couple whose futures, individually and together, looked bright. I prayed for their families and that their killer would be caught. Who would do such a thing? I asked myself. And why? Over a car? Money? Did the killers know one of them, or both? When does the senseless killing stop?
Yesterday when I read that a 19-year-old African American man-child and two 19-year-old African American females had been arrested and charged in the couple’s death I wanted to cry. The trio didn’t know the couple. Police said they tried to take Nia’s 2010 Honda CRV but the anti-theft device thwarted their efforts. Someone did take Nia’s engagement ring.
Police charged Shiquan Bellamy with shooting the couple, and detectives also have tied him to the shooting deaths of three other people during a two-month crime spree. Bellamy and the other two have pleaded not guilty.
Veteran Hudson County prosecutor, Edward DeFazio, called the spree one of the most extraordinary displays of wanton, gratuitous violence he’s ever seen, the Associated Press reported. “What disturbs me the most is how a 19-year-old can be involved in this depraved, gratuitous killing,” he said.
That’s what disturbs me also. Where does a 19-year-old man-child learn such callous indifference for life? Fortunately, as the prosecutor noted, it is not the norm. (Sometimes when watching the news or reading the newspaper, it’s hard to keep track of what is normal and what isn’t anymore in some our cities.)
“This is something, as far as behavior is concerned, that, thank God, we don’t see too often,” DeFazio said. “But seeing it here is more than enough to last a lifetime.”
Stories like these puncture my soul and leave me riddled with questions. What is happening, has happened in our families, our churches and our society that has helped produce children who would just as soon shoot you as speak to you? Children who are willing to take by force what doesn’t belong to them? An ipod, a wallet, a car, a life.
I know that thankfully this isn’t all our children. I just left a high school journalism awards program that showcased the work and diligence of students who are aspiring to good things. Thank God. I know plenty of young people in churches and homes who have made right decisions to pursue life in honest, decent ways. Thank God again.
But I am troubled by the number of black males in their late teens and early 20s who are caught up in a culture of guns, drugs and gangs that has led them down a perilous path. Also increasing numbers of young girls are falling into a lifestyle that leads to jail or death. They all need an escape hatch to a better way of thinking, of being and of living within this world.
Something has to be done to prevent our children from being sucked into this vortex of mindless disregard for that which is right. I say this as a mother who has struggled with varying success to keep her own man-child from falling down the slippery slope that leads away from a productive, successful life.
I say this as someone who recognizes that good people, like Michael and Nia, are dying at the hands of a generation of young people who are already dead on the inside. How do we awaken them to new possibilities? How do we help them see and exercise their God-given potential? I am praying for our young people but I know that prayer sometimes must be couple with action, our action, to bring about a change.
This is a time for action. What can be done? What is being done in your church, your community to help young people live their best lives?
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