To the left is Patricia Larry. She's holding a picture of her son, 13-year-old Darius Simmons. To the right is 75-year-old John Henry Spooner, accused of murdering 13-year-old Darius Simmons.
The fun loving 6th grader was simply moving a garbage can in front of his home when his neighbor, 75 year old John Henry Spooner confronted him with a shotgun and accused him of stealing from his home. Darius, who was in school the time of the robbery, denied being involved with the theft. John Henry Spooner then proceed to shoot Darius in his chest, while he had his hands raise showing Spooner he was unarmed. His mom, who was watching in horror, ran to Darius to see if she could find a pulse, she couldn’t. Darius, 13 years old and unarmed, was murdered in cold blood in front of his mother.
Had enough? It gets worse:
According to Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan, he had breakfast with Spooner an hour before the shooting and Spooner told him he suspected Darius of the crime and was upset that the police hadn’t done anything about it. Spooner then told the Alderman, that there were other ways of dealing with these problems. That qualifies as premeditated murder of a 13 year old boy. To make matters worse, the family only lived next to Spooner for a month.
You know, I'm not a violent man by nature and I don't condone mob violence or so-called "blood feuds," but it wouldn't pay me no mind to see this man taken off this earth for what he did.
He didn't even bother to talk to the parents. He just put a gun to the kid's chest and just let it rip. That's a coward's move. John Henry Spooner is a complete, yellow-backed coward.
Many people believe that there's no consequence to snuffing a young black life. The general ineffectualness of the justice system and America's card blanche for harming and killing innocent black Americans throughout history seems to back this assertion. It's long since been time to deliver a message to these cowards about snuffing out black lives and it won't take Obama or Eric Holder to do it. Nor is it going to take online petitions or marches. We're long past the point of doing battle in 2012 with 1960s-era tactics.
Something has to give, otherwise people will take this killing and others as a sign that they can get away with this. The shit has to stop here and now.
You're probably asking yourself "how?" So am I. There's no one answer that'll be the magic bullet. At the end of the day, it's gonna take the forced acknowledgement that all life has an equal value. These people won't even give us that common courtesy. Frankly, I believe these people don't want us to exist, period. And that's a big problem.
At the very least, I think I'm gonna move up getting my concealed carry permit a little sooner.
