I'd like to offer my deepest condolences to the family of Krystal Steadman, the 9-year-old slain girl. This horrible event has affected not only the little girl's family but the whole community. This is not something that happened to Krystal or that happened to her family. It happened to all of us, and all of us are mourning.
As the community mourns, many are compelled to do something to either punish those responsible or change things so that it does not happen again. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office is proposing that we teach our kids to protect themselves from strangers. They want to go to schools and teach our kids how to draw attention to themselves if they are approached by a stranger. They even want to teach kids how to disable a vehicle in case they are abducted. The sheriff is doing the right thing within his ability. Other members of the community are calling for the death penalty for the accused. Some are so eager to heal that they would like to see the accused dead even before the trial.
I look at all these responses as emotional and ineffective attempts to solve the real problem. While teaching our kids self-protection might help, it will not prevent such a tragedy from reoccurring. Even if we execute the person responsible for this crime, similar crimes will occur again. The evil that lurks in the hearts of some humans is like a weed that keeps coming back again and again. We can kill one weed today, but another weed of its kind will come back again and again.
In order to fix this problem we need to get to the root of the problem. We need to study murderers. We need to look at their blood. We need to analyze their genetic make up. We need to understand what causes the evil in their hearts. There has to be some explanation.
The federal government needs to set up an agency that specializes in studying behavior and physical makeup of evil doers. Such agency should be made up of doctors and behavioral scientists. The evil is a disease and we need to find a cure for it.
The person that committed this heinous crime is already dead. It is too late to anything about him, but it is not too late to do something about a potential murderer. We need to figure out how to detect them and how to cure them. Killing them after they commit murder is nothing more than a primitive response to our frustration. I am not saying that the murder of little Krystal does not deserve to die. He deserves worse than that. I am saying that killing him will not solve the problem.
MARK GARIC
Minden
