The Trump Effect continues. A nation can rot from its head, and there are many indications that we are seeing that more now than ever in recent times. Why would a 14 yr old kid lynch an 8-year-old bi-racial boy?
Police are investigating the incident of an 8-year-old boy lynched apparently by boys who taunted him with racial epithets. The boy’s mother wrote the following in a Facebook post.
“So my son is being flown to Dartmouth after a 14 year old kid decided to hang him from a tree. I don’t care if this was a so called accident or not. My son almost died because of some little sh** teenage kids.” [sic]
Valley News reported the following.
Claremont — The family of an 8-year-old Claremont boy says it is trying to determine what led him to suffer from rope burns around his neck in the backyard of a home near Barnes Park late last month. The boy’s grandmother, Lorrie Slattery, said her grandson and a group of teenagers were playing in a yard in their neighborhood around 5 p.m. on Aug. 28 when the teens started calling the boy racial epithets and throwing sticks and rocks at his legs.
The situation escalated when some or all of the teens stepped up on a picnic table and grabbed a nearby rope that had been part of a tire swing, Slattery said. “The (teenagers) said, ‘Look at this,’ supposedly putting the rope around their necks,” Slattery said. “One boy said to (her grandson), ‘Let’s do this,’ and then pushed him off the picnic table and hung him.” It’s not clear based on Slattery’s account if the rope was forced over the boy’s neck or if he allowed it there voluntarily.
As of this post, the police is refusing to comment on the incident other than confirming there was an incident. Law enforcement is citing confidentiality that protects juvenile proceedings.
As he has done repeatedly, Claremont Police Chief Mark Chase on Thursday declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality laws that protect juveniles. Chase has confirmed that there was an incident involving juveniles on Aug. 28 that remains under investigation.
In an interview on Thursday, he acknowledged that he has received several inquiries from people both in and out of Claremont, and though he is constrained on what he can say, he said he has reassured each person that the police department is committed to getting to the bottom of all complaints it receives. For good reasons, Chase said, criminal investigations involving juveniles are kept confidential. “Mistakes they make as a young child should not have to follow them for the rest of their life,” Chase said.
The chief seems more concerned about the well-being of the teenagers that did the lynching than of the young man lynched. Angela Helm of The Root says it best.
*Notice how he called these predators “young children,” infantilizing the white teens. Conversely, teens like Trayvon Martin are made out to be hulking, menacing adults. Chief Chase seems to be centering the perpetrators’ feelings and futures, all but forgetting about the trauma of a little boy who had his so-called friends hang him from a tree to the point where he had to be medevaced to a hospital.
This incident could scar the young boy for life. One hopes they give the requisite punishment to the criminals that did this lynching.
(h/t The Root, NH1.com, Valley News)