I Know a Murderer...

 I'd never thought I would ever say the sentence "I know a murderer" and be speaking the truth. Now, to be honest, there are some individuals that I would be less surprised to be saying this about...Turkey was not one of those people. 

In fifth grade, none of us went by our own names, some of our names made sense, others were random: None of the twenty-eight students would be able to give you the meanings behind half of them. Turkey was one of these. His name was David, the class clown. It didn't matter who you were or what kind of a day you were having, David could make you laugh. He wasn't the kind of clown that didn't care about school, David got excellent grades and knew when he needed to buckle down and do his work. Together, with about five other students, we stayed in from recess to read a book about the fifth grade being a dungeon: a popular line in the novel was "What's up Pussycat"....David would then proceed to sing the lyrics "What's up Pussycat, woah, woah, woah, oohhh" as he danced around making the rest of us laugh.

The end of the year came quick. The class had a chocolate pudding fight outside, fourth graders against the fifth graders. "We are family" by SisterSledge played at our graduation. We signed yearbooks: Turkey signed mine. The next year, I went on to the middle school while Turkey's family moved and he finished off elementary at a different school. We never saw much of eachother after that since we were no longer in the same classroom all day. 

I would see Turkey in passing in the halls of high school occasionally. We both ended up at the birthday party of a mutual friend and talked about the days of elementary school. He was in show choir and involved in most of the theatre shows: he was still the clown. I'm sure David wasn't the perfect student, but he was still a pretty good kid.

David started dating Taylor, I'm not sure for how long, but he was head over heels for this girl-a smart, cute, talented and kind popular girl. I remember coming to school one day to hear it announced that Taylor was tragically killed in a car accident the night before: The school was devastated (her's would be marked as the sixth traffic fatality in 10 weeks within our corporation), but David's heart was ripped in two. I remember people commenting at how torn he was at the funeral, how he kissed Taylor one last time and held her hand before the casket was closed (Students had said that David was out bowling with Taylor and other friends the night the crash had happened, the reason Taylor was driving home that night).

Our newspapers and new stations are currently flooded with the story of a 20-year-old man charged with two counts of murder-for stabbing his 7-year-old half-sister "Jilly" and his mother. Word is that he stabbed his mother and sister with a two-pronged meat fork; his sister was also found to have blunt force trauma to the head. His mother had managed to call 911 before dying: Jilly was rushed to the hospital and died there from her injuries. When emergency services arrived at the scene, they found David in the room, clothes covered in blood and holding the murder weapon. David had sat and watched his mother die and little sister suffer. I still can't believe it. This man can't possibly be Turkey.

Our class clown, Taylor's first love, a business student at IU, is being tested to see about an insanity plea, is now facing charges for 2 counts of murder, and most likely a double life sentence without parole. He was once one of us, a small town kid, suffering from the death of a friend-he is now the reason 18 first graders are trying to understand why there is an empty desk in their classroom. 

I'm sitting here, trying to wrap my mind around how a person can change that much. I've always believed that every murderer, every criminal has a family that knows a different side of them; but, I've never thought I would be one of those people. I never thought that I would be sitting here thinking that a murderer is a normal person, a funny boy who just wants to put a smile on your face, a dancing show choir performer, a stage crew member who would do anything to steal an extra minute with his girlfriend. 

If you read the comments on any of the new pages,  they are filled with people wishing a horrible death on David, people talking about how he must have been another lowlife teenager who's mommy stopped giving him handouts, or turning 2 deaths into a political debate on guns. All I ask is that you pray for the community, for the family who is suffering 2 deaths as well as the pain of a cousin, a grandson, a son, a nephew, a friend, a brother, being at fault and locked up in prison before he graduated from college. 

I'm asking you to look deeper into people, to not only see the wrongful acts that they have committed, but see the person behind those acts-see the child that they once were, the tears that they have cried, the friends that they had/have. I beg you to look at everyone you see as a person equal to you. Show each one the forgiveness, grace, compassion that you want to be shown when you mess up. 

I can say I know a murderer, but long before I could say I knew a boy...Turkey.