Month: May 2018

Nine men were arrested and charged with the intentional homicide of American tourist, Bakari Henderson on July 2017 on the idyllic Greek island of Zakynthos.  It’s been almost a year since the brutal attack and killing of the young American outside a bar on the island and we have yet to see justice prevail in this case.  The suspects are a 34-year-old Greek bartender, a 32-year-old British citizen of Serbian origin and seven Serbian men.

Why was Henderson attacked and beaten to death?  According to reports, it was because he had taken a selfie with a woman of Serbian descent who had requested the selfie from him.  A man nearby was heard saying, “There are a lot of Serbs in the bar, why are you talking to a black guy?” and proceeded to hit Henderson on the side of the head.  This set-off the chain of events which led to the young man’s death.

Henderson was 22-years-old at the time and a recent graduate of the University of Arizona.  He had big plans for his future and he was in Greece trying to get a new clothing venture off the ground.  He was accompanied by some friends and until that fateful night, he had been having fun on the Greek island.

According to his mother, Jill Henderson, in an interview with Gayle King of CBS News, he was, “more comfortable overseas  than in the United States.  He just felt it was safer over in Europe and overseas in general,” referring to the racial climate against black men in the United States.

It could have been this misconception that cost him his life. After the altercation in the bar, a surveillance footage shows Anderson being chased out of the bar by a group of men, surrounded and then beaten to death.  According to Greek police spokesman, Theodore Chronopoulous, “They kicked and punched him to his body and his head.  His death came from hits to the head.”  Henderson was on his own against the angry mob who pummeled him to the ground and there was nothing anyone could do except to stand and watch the incident take place.  After the beating, his friends tried to resuscitate him but he died on the way to hospital.

In the same interview with Gayle King of CBS News, Jill Henderson had this to say about her son’s death.  “What parents would raise such barbarians to do such an evil thing to another human thing.?”  Perhaps that is the exact question that ran through all of our minds as we read about the beating death of this young man.  However, could a more pertinent question be, “Was it racially motivated?”  Was he targeted because of his skin color?  The woman who approached him for the selfie was of Serbian descent and reports state that she knew the men involved in the attack.  Could it have been a set-up right from the beginning?  Why did she go up to a total stranger for a selfie and why did she pick Bakari Henderson?  These are just unanswered questions that do need answers.

Coming back to the question of race, was Bakari Henderson a walking target because of his skin color?  If so, nothing could have prepared him for the “hate” he faced on that July night, a potent force so violent that the end result was the loss of a life.   This was certainly not because of one selfie with a stranger.

What animals will do this to a human being?  The kind that have no respect for human life.  The kind that refuses to see the human beneath the coating of skin color and the kind  that decided he deserved to die because of a selfie with a Serbian woman.  That is the sad reality folks.

Bakari Henderson was wrong in his assumption that it was safer in Europe than in the United States.  The under-current of racism, hate and violence  runs deep here just as it does elsewhere and from time to time it rears its ugly head when you least expect it like it did in that bar on the Greek island of Zakynthos.

A life lost but not forgotten.

 

 

A series on murders that made sensational headlines because of the “senselessness” of the crime.

He was a young man from Melbourne, Australia.  He was handsome, he was ambitious, he was in love and he had everything going for him.  He was two weeks away from celebrating his 23rd birthday when his life came to a screeching halt when a bullet from a passing car found its way to his back and he was pronounced dead within a matter of minutes.

Christopher Lane had won a baseball scholarship with Oklahoma/s East Central University and he was feeling on top of the world on August 13, 2013. What happened on that hot, humid day and how he lost his life is beyond imagination.  His father, Peter Lane, put it this way as he tried to make sense of his son’s death.  “It is heartless and to try to understand it is a short way to insanity.  There is not gonna be any good to come out of this, cause it was just so senseless.”  He was right.  The senselessness of the killing would make headlines around the world and would make many of us sit up and take notice at man’s inhumanity to man.

They are James Edwards, 15, Chancey Luna, 16, and Michael Jones, 17, and they were at the other end of the spectrum.  All three were restless with no future in sight.  They had spent the night partying away, smoking meth amphetamine, drinking alcohol and taking Xanax.  On the day of the murder, Edwards and Luna stepped into Jones’s Ford Focus for a joyride.  It would quickly turn into tragedy for Christopher Lane.  He was jogging, minding his own business when Chancey Luna saw him and decided to take aim from the backseat of the car.  The bullet penetrated just below Lane’s shoulder blade piercing his heart and lungs leaving him gasping for breath in a  roadside ditch.  There was no chance for survival.

According to Jones, “We were bored and didn’t have anything to do so we decided to kill somebody.”  Remorse was a long time coming if at all.  Instead they were on an euphoric high and the exact words used were, “You got that n***a, you shot him, you got him.”

The three teenagers were sentenced as adults.  Jones 17, was charged with accessory after the fact of first degree murder, later upgraded to first-degree murder.  James Edwards, 15, was sentenced to 25 years jail with 10 years off the sentence suspended and triggerman, Luna was sentenced to life in prison without parole.  However, in 2016, Luna’s conviction was overturned by the appeals court because, “the juvenile’s chronological age and immaturity” were not taken into account at time of sentencing.  No date has been set as to when a new sentencing will be held.

This is a story that needs retelling because no matter how much time has gone by between then and now, the senselessness of the crime is horrific to say the least and will never get old.  Violence has become an all too familiar part of our lives and killings are nothing new.  Each new day brings another story of killing or killings and we have become jaded to the violence all around us.  However, in this case, the brutality of the crime stands out because the victim and perpetrators had no prior history.  Christopher Lane lost his life because he was seen as a thrill-inducing object not as a human being and therein lies the horror of this specific crime.

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

Terry Pratchett