Surrounded by Tragedy

In one of the newsrooms where I used to work, I remember clearly one of my fellow anchors dismissing a story from the lineup, saying, 'It's only lowlife scum killing lowlife scum, and no one really cares!" I don't remember the actual story, but I do remember it was a shooting, thought to be gang-related and what he was saying was that it involved a portion of society with which our listeners might not come into regular contact. By 'no one', he meant, 'no one like us'.

Those harsh comments came back to me this week as details continue to emerge about the short life and horrific death of Victoria Stafford of Woodstock.

Last week, we heard she was being raised by a single mother, a drug addict who gave birth at 17, and who apparently didn't have a job.

The woman who admits killing Tori was also a drug addict, a dropout on welfare, daughter of a stripper who, as an infant, had been 'given' to another stripper only to be raised in a succession of violent, drug-addled households.

We don't yet know the circumstances of the man who's accused of rape and murder, but I'm going to bet his 'backstory' will be similar to the mother and his co-accused.

How far back in these people's lives would we have to look to find someone holding down a job, meeting their responsibilities, unaddicted, with an education and self-respect and a life's goal other than escaping the pain inflicted by their circumstances?

Victoria's murder is a tragedy and a hideous crime. But there were a lot of lost lives in the universe that child inhabited, and those lives were lost long before Victoria's life was taken.