I just found out the other day that back in ’96 a kid I went to grade school with for 8 years, that his father was murdered in front of him. I was shocked and saddened by the news. Then I saw the video clip from the news on an interview with him, as they have reopened the case. I have to admit the first thought I had was that he killed his father. For the sake of the post we’ll call him “Benny”. I went to school with Benny from 1st -8th grade in a Catholic school. We had small classes and back then, particularly my class, we were considered the bad kids. We weren’t criminals or anything, we were bored kids not getting enough out of our education or burning off much needed energy that led us to misbehave and act out. We used to sing in the choir on Sundays for mass but we were so unable to not goof off that they wouldn’t allow us to continue as we would occasionally disrupt mass.
Benny is of Asian descent, and back then we had him pegged in the stereotypical Asian nerd category. Essentially he was. He was a smart student, and was always taunted his A’s in class and would have fits if he didn’t achieve a perfect score or was considered to be the best in the class. I’ll never forget the school science fair where I did a study on a dissected frog and he had some rocket science project that we all knew his father did for him. Of course he won, and I was completely upset because I had to kill a frog to complete my project. I never considered him a close friend or someone I wanted to hang out with, to me even back then there was something about him that rubbed me the wrong way and kept him at arms length.
We all went our separate ways to high school and college. Then with the invention of facebook, I’ve reconnected to several old classmates, one of whom I stay in constant contact with. I’ve thought about him on occasion when asked if I knew or found anyone else on facebook. The few times I did think of Benny I assumed that he would be in some top company running things, or a doctor or even a scientist. He just struck me as the type to be so ambitious to the best. And then I saw the video. To hear him describe the murder just seemed off, maybe he was nervous when he laughed and looked away from the camera. I found it unusual that no one saw anything and there was no description of the gunman. He describes leaving his father in the driveway to stop his mother from coming out and just saying dad died, this right after his father was shot. You would think he would have been by his father’s side trying to save him. His brother and sister soon move out of the family’s house and separate themselves from him. He stayed on living with his mother, stating he felt he needed to take care of her now that his father was gone, she passed away in 2001 due to complications of diabetes. Unfortunately Benny still lives in the same house, according to the reporter, reliving the nightmare of his father’s death every day as he walks down the driveway. The pictures of the house are bad, it shows the lack of care over the years, and the reporter states that Benny being stuck in the trauma of it all has been unable to move on with his life and ended up a bartender in a local bowling alley for the past several years and is unable to repair and maintain the home.
He probably had nothing to do with it, and is suffering from PTSD. Maybe in losing his father who we all remember to be such a loving family man who did everything he could to give his children the world, he lost himself. Maybe I’m just jaded and only remember the child who threw tantrums and was always given his way. Who tried to bully everyone and even his family at a young age, and can see a different angle than anyone else can. Maybe I’m the one with the problem to begin with. But I can’t shake the fact that his behavior on camera was odd, to the interview printed in the paper points to a man might have just had a hand in his father’s death.
It must be just me, and it’s sad to think that is how I see things now.
Recent Comments