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I’ve had it, and I’m ready to snap at a moments notice. Unfortunately, the reason I’m ready to snap is not because school is stressful or that I have a 10 page paper too– I’ve gone through those phases already.
I was perusing the Internet and came across a story about two 16-year-old boys in Minnesota who beat up, Darrell Bisson, a middle-aged blind man. I’ll be honest, I laughed at first, but after the second “guffaw” I knew I shouldn’t be laughing. A blind-man walking his dog was repeatedly struck with the handle of an axe.
He didn’t see the hit coming and was probably lucky if he even heard the footsteps of these two delinquents.
According to CNN.com, the second weapon of choice by the two boys was a shoe. What does that mean? According to police reports, one of the boys “stomped” on Bisson’s face.
I hope you’re sick to your stomach right now, and I hope you’re ashamed to be a human being, because I was when I read this article. I’m sick of our species pumping out gun-toting and violent-crazy kids.
How could two kids who can’t even drive beat a man to death? Not only did they beat him, he was blind. I’ve read some gut-wrenching stories about abuse and this probably isn’t the worst “attack” I’ll ever hear about, but what does this say about our culture?
I’m not some sociologist looking for you to understand why something like this happened. I’m looking for comfort. I want to know that there aren’t more people out there like these two kids. I want someone to tell me this is never going to happen again — because it shouldn’t.
The problem with this type of incident is that we are all too removed from it until something similar happens to us. I’m talking about making this man an actual living person capable of compassion, anger, peace and confusion.
Maybe Bisson had just finished dinner and was listening to “the game” while he was finishing up the dishes. Maybe his dog, named Max, was eating or possibly tucked under his feet at the counter of the kitchen. His ritual may have been to take a walk after dinner. So he headed out with his somewhat tired dog and picked up his axe handle — what he used for protection on his walk.
It may have been a cool December, evening and he heard the pitter-patter of footsteps around him. Someone grabbed the handle from his hand and he probably instinctively raised his arm in self-defense. The first blow may have broken his arm and this is when Bisson truly feared for his life — while his dog possibly fled in fear.
Next was the life-crippling stomp to Bisson’s face and then it was over. No more breathing, no more hope and no more potential for happiness — all of it taken away without a moments notice.
I’ve thought about these two kids, what Bisson felt like before he died and how these kids now feel sitting alone in their cold and, hopefully, damp jail cells. The amount of disgust I have felt from this type of act is only matched by my desire for the perpetrators to spend the rest of their lives rotting away in a lonely jail cell.
Violence won’t go away if we ignore it, and it certainly won’t dissolve into obscurity if we acknowledge its bothersome presence from month-to-month. I think this sort of violence won’t ever go away, that’s what scares me the most — this kind of hate is going to continue.
Marshall Dury is a junior journalism major.
