Because if they did, I would probably climb into one, go back to Saturday night, and kill the monster who did this with my bare hands before he could finish his work:
Police killed a 27-year-old man as he kicked, punched and stomped a toddler to death despite other people’s attempts to stop him on a dark, country road, authorities said.
[snip]
As they got closer, the couple saw the man brutally beating the toddler behind his truck and throwing the child on the ground, according to Singh. Two or three other cars stopped, an unusual number to be passing through the remote area surrounded by a dairy, a cow pasture, a cornfield and a farmhouse, he said.
“What we got from witnesses is he was punching, slapping, kicking, stomping, shaking,” Singh said. “They tried to intervene and get involved, but their efforts really didn’t have an effect. The suspect was engaged in what he was doing. He just pushed them off and went back to it.”
A sheriff’s helicopter responding to emergency calls from the area landed in a cow pasture at 10:19 p.m. carrying a Modesto police officer who shot the man to death after he refused an order to stop beating the child, Singh said.
Paramedics tried to resuscitate the toddler, who was not breathing when they arrived. The boy was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
I am the father of a little boy this age. When I read this story, I think of his little face. This face:
I think of his little body, his unsteady run that often leads to a tumble, his frightened cry when he awakes in the night alone in his crib, the way he clings to me when he first wakes up or gives me kisses at random because he’s just so sweet. The mere thought of a man beating and throwing and killing a child like my son - not even out of diapers yet - causes my throat to close up, my stomach to churn, my ears to ring, and my breath to come in ragged gasps. I am not a violent man, but reading this sets some deep, primal switch in my brain to “destroy”. Dear God in heaven I want to unmake this poor, innocent child’s last night and give him a future of his own. How terrified he must have been.
This is one of those cases where the fact that they shot the perp doesn’t begin to feel like justice.
Can someone really be that evil without being a demoniac?
The “that’s not Christian!” mewling over at Rod Dreher’s post on the subject (”He needed killing”) drives me up the wall.
The only way to stop this monstrosity was to kill him. Ergo, he needed killing. Atrocities like this bring out my inner berserker.
I’m curious how many of these whiny murder-lovers would feel when it finally happens to someone they love. Will they suddenly discover the Church’s teachings that don’t condemn capital punishment or lethal self-defense?
I’ve been trying to work on a column on this for Inside Catholic based on my experience with the murder of my mother-in-law last year, but so far I haven’t been able to sort it out in a way that’s effective.
Ah … an “elderly couple” were the first witnesses.
That answers my question “why the @#$%!!! weren’t the passers-by able to stop this guy?”
But I can imagine a determined, strong, 27-year old man being more than a match for a truly elderly couple.
But yeah, if I were there, I would have to consider it my duty to STOP this guy by whatever means necessary. If he breaks in the process, well, omelets, eggs, you know…
Not that I ever want to have to put that to the test.
God have mercy.
Dear God in heaven.
Yes, we must turn the other cheek. What we mayn’t do is turn other people’s for them. If a religion is so far divorced from the nature of manhood that it would demand that I stand by and watch an innocent child get beaten to death rather than kill the bastard who’s beating him, then that religion has nothing to say to me. Ever.
But that is nothing like anything the Church has ever said. Anyone who thinks it is is tragically stupid.