After my post yesterday about the Harvard student who got 2 years for stabbing a young man of color to death, Stephen Bor passed on information about the resolution of a court case on the other side of the country on the same day.

Two men shot semiautomatic weapons into a car of unarmed Cambodian men; two of the men in the car – Sovintha Nhem and Sophea Sun – were killed. One of the gunmen also died. The other gunman – after two hung juries – copped a plea and walked free yesterday.

The shooting stemmed from a confrontation that began when Nhem, who had been asked to leave a Skyway bowling alley and casino with his friends, wandered into the yard of Sidorchuk’s nearby rental home. The two exchanged increasingly heated words — with Sidorchuk and Belk hurling racial slurs and Nhem’s group shouting threats in return — until Nhem and his four friends backed a car into Sidorchuk’s driveway.

At that, Sidorchuk and Belk opened fire with semiautomatic weapons, shooting more than 20 rounds into the car. None of the young men inside were armed.

Deputies who later rushed to the scene discovered a marijuana-growing operation inside Sidorchuk’s home, but no testimony about that was allowed at trial.

From Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Again, I’m sure the jury heard a lot about why the young men were kicked out of the bowling alley, yet word of the killer’s narcotics operation was left out. And I’m not making a case for anything beyond the fact that the details of the lives of the killer and victims were not shared to the same extent.

And just like yesterday, it’s clear that the court system didn’t consider the victims to be human beings. Simply props, maybe extras that changed the narrative of the story. The story about the benevolent stoner who accidentally killed his best friend and had to deal with that guilt and grief for the rest of his life.

Oh, and he murdered a couple of Asians too.

And just like yesterday, I know that I’m angry, but the truth is I don’t feel the anger. All I really feel is sad.

So many people I work with and have gotten to know over the past decade, they – we – invest so much of our energy into telling our communities that we are people. No matter what our media or government or schools or society wants us to believe, we have the power to reject that and still find strength in ourselves and in each other. That we have to hold on to every shred of humanity that we can find, and we have to work so hard every day to reject the messages from every direction telling us that we just don’t – because we are spiritually and emotionally and intellectually incapable – measure up to complete human beings, whatever we take that to mean.

And it’s not even that I ever feel like the struggle is done, or is almost done, or has even really gotten better, because it’s a constant effort. But then there’s this kind of news.

Rest in peace brothers.

Tags: violence

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 1:18 PM and is filed under stuff in the newspaper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.