Mississippi police murder major college fooball recruit...maybe

I have two thoughts after reading this story and this thread just now for the first time.

1. It is laughable, albert, that you would decide someone wouldn't kill himself because of the way he played football. I've played a lot of football in my life, played with hard-nosed, bad-ass, refuse-to-lose SOBs of all races and creeds. And I've learned that very rarely does that have a damn thing to do with their state of mind, or even in many cases their personality. Football was an escape for me, a refuge for my complicated and conflicted teenage mind. I was very good at it for a time, and in many respects, it was the one place I felt confident and unburdened. And I was not the only one. One of my best friends was one of the best high school football players in the history of my state. If I got a call tomorrow saying he'd hung himself with a belt, or put a shotgun in his mouth, I'd be devastated ... but also not particularly surprised. As buckweaver pointed out, depression and suicide do not wear flashing neon signs on our foreheads.

2. I really like Wetzel and Robinson, and feel they are two of the best journalists working today, but as a matter of craft, the Emily Dickinson ending didn't work for me. At all. At the very least, if you're going to assign that much weight to it, I want to know more about it. Was it, as someone said, an English handout? A hand-written copy? The first poem in a book of Dickinson's poems? If the writers really wanted to keep in there, that's fine, but I'd have argued for striking this entire graph. "Lying eerily amongst the remains of a violent end to a promising life, the opening lines still call out." Not to get all English teacher here, but I don't know how a poem is "lying eerily".

 

Agree on the ending. Just seemed forced. It almost seemed like the second they saw or heard about it that they were determined to make it a key piece of the story, whether it fit or not. And like you said, I'd like to know why it was there or some sort of explanation of it.

 

Even the best people have demons.

 

Please don't go mental on me. I was merely expressing my view based on the 1-2 times I saw the kid play. For what it's worth, I've talked to some others, coaches not from his school, who made the same observation I did. And, too, there have been a few others who had the same thoughts as Pallister and Double Down.

Interestingly, one story that ran a day or so after the incident quoted his coach, who gave a very ambivalent no comment when asked about the likelihood that it was a suicide. It left the distinct impression that he didn't consider it out of the realm of possiblity. I think the exact passage (which stuck in my memory) was, "Coach X paused for several seconds when asked if he thought Johnson had killed himself, then replied, 'I'd rather not comment on that.'"

At any rate, I've been around long enough to know that suicide is a totally irrational act, and I have personal awareness of how destructive depression can be. I just thought that, based solely on what I saw on the field, that it was unlikely. But you never know.

 

Nope -- yours (and theirs) is an invalid observation, without intimate knowledge of the kid's psychological well-being ... and even sometimes with it. If the family doesn't have a clue, and many families don't, surely you can't either.

Basing your judgment on "seeing the kid play" is absolutely foolish.

 

Never said that. Leading the witness.

 

OK. I clearly don't understand what you're trying to say.

 

You know what, buck, you're right. I don't have intimate knowledge of the kid's psychological makeup, don't know the family, really don't know the town all that well. So I guess that means I'm not entitled to express an opinion or make an observation based on what I've freely admitted was VERY limited exposure to the kid.

Next time, I'll defer to your obviously superior wisdom as to what is a valid or invalid opinion. Happy now?

 

Wait. Wait. Don't tell me. Wait.

You watched Mississippi Burning, didn't you? A Time To Kill?

While we're not perfect, we've taken great strides since those days. Are there still problems? Yep. Just like anywhere else. Much to the disbelief of many around the country, we're not carrying nooses through the streets looking for black people.

 

I think the kin of James Byrd, Brandon McClelland, Bernard Burden and Isaiah Clyburn wouldn't share the same view that you have.
However, this race crap is just that, crap. I truly believed if this happened in a northern state, and a lot of unreported stuff happens there, I don't think it would be as sesationalized.
Just my take.

 

Two nights ago, HBO ran a pretty interesting documentary about handguns and children. It was called 5 American Handguns, 5 American Kids. If you haven't seen it, I recommend you watch it.

It's some pretty tough stuff to watch, especially the first one involving a 3-year old shooting a 2-year old (room got so dusty my wife woke up and asked if I was OK).

But one particular case is about a kid that his parents called a "Happy-go-lucky" kid who had everything he could ever want. He was always smiling, always joking, always making people laugh. And one day, inexplicably, he left school early, went home and shot himself with his stepfather's handgun. His mother said she'd give anything to know why he did it.

I'm still not convinced this case in Mississippi was a suicide, but like Buck and others have said on this thread, not all suicides are predictable.

By the way, the documentary runs again on HBO Family East on Feb. 26 at 8:45 p.m. EST and 11:45 p.m. EST on HBO Family West.

 

Ok. A couple things. First, the headline of this thread is my bad. It seems like people are attaching that headline to the Yahoo story, and that's not fair. I should have been more sensitive to the fact that I was posting a story that didn't match up with what I was saying in the headline. The headline was my opinion...my take on it , not a statement of what the story said. I apologize to the Yahoo guys for that.

Secondly, about the Yahoo story itself, I think it's ridculous that there is this criticism that Robinson and Wetzel preyed upon anyone for this story. From all the stuff I have read, there was nothing, or almost nothing, written nationally. So of course national writers are going to do this story. There is absolutely no doubt that at the time they did the piece it was entirely warranted. As for it being slanted or sensationalistic, I thought they gave a look into the minds of the community. Read the follow up stuff. Clearly the community doesn't feel this kid killed himself. Should they have just ignored that? If it feels heavy on the kid and the family, I'm sure that's because the police refused comment (which is exactly what the story says). I didn't have an issue with the ending, either. Considering the circumstances, I'm pretty sure that poem would stop any good journalist in their tracks.

Finally, as for the Grand Jury and the new evidence, yeah, it sounds like the kid shot himself. But I don't think there's any doubt the cops screwed up parts of the investigation. I think it was total bullshit that they release a police report saying the kid was trying to break into that chick's trailer when he obviously wasn't (this was pointed out by the Grand Jury). I think that B&E report totally framed the kid in an unfair light. Why should the release that bogus B&E report without investigation, and then expect to get away with not answering any questions for two months? The family has every right to be pissed.

All in all, this is just a sad story. For everyone involved.