Posted on 08/15/2015 2:28:31 PM PDT by Dartman
TORONTO - What a difference two families make.
How could you not be struck by the glaring disparity between the parents of Lecent Ross and those of Duvel Hibbert, each mourning the loss of a child killed by gun violence?
Lecent, just 14, was killed in her Jamestown Cres. home last month by an illegal handgun and now two boys — one 18, the other just 13 — are under arrest.
Hibbert, gunned down inside Muzik nightclub on Aug. 4, was a 23-year-old with a long criminal record who was supposed to be on house arrest under his father’s supervision.
Two grieving families: One making the painful effort of looking inward at what role they may have played in their child’s senseless death; the other, lashing out at everyone else, lawyering up with veiled threats to sue the city and the nightclub, yet not acknowledging at all the grave responsibility they themselves must bear for his death.
How different the approach of Lecent’s family. Their young daughter was killed at a friend’s home, not far from their own. They refuse to ignore that this happened on their watch.
Were the kids goofing around with the .40-calibre Smith & Wesson semi-automatic handgun when it went off accidentally? Did someone pull the trigger and not know it was loaded? Where was the adult who was supposedly in the house at the time?
We will eventually learn those answers at a trial far down the road. In the meantime, this much we know: Lecent was killed by one bullet that struck her face. An 18-year-old is facing criminal negligence causing death and the illegal possession of a firearm among many other charges. The 13-year-old — perhaps his brother, though the police refuse to say — is under arrest for manslaughter, a charge which suggests an accidental killing.
They are kids, all. Where were their parents? How did those who raised those two boys not know what the children may have been involved in? How did those who love Lecent not know she was spending time with potentially dangerous friends?
Those are legitimate questions, tough questions, that the young girl’s family is bravely facing head-on.
“I believe parents should be held accountable for their kids’ actions,” Lecent’s mother, Alicia Jesquith, told reporters in a trembling voice Friday morning at the press conference called by Toronto Police to announce the charges in her daughter’s death.
“Please, please stop the gun violence,” she begged. “Too much of our young children are being lost to the gun. I’m asking please, look at your kids. Look at your kids every day and tell them that you love them.”
But that’s not enough. Be their parent, not their friend. Check in their bags, she said. Look for what they don’t want you to see.
Her final statement, though, seemed more aimed at herself than at anyone else: “And know who their friends are,” she said softly. “Know who they’re hanging around with every day.”
Of course what happened to her daughter is not her fault, but hers are the words of a broken-hearted mother obviously plagued by what she could have done to better protect her innocent child.
Not so the parents of Duvel Hibbert, shot down in that Drake after-party in a targeted murder that was no doubt tied to his career in guns and drugs.
Of course they should mourn their son and no one deserves to be murdered. But we can’t forget that he lived a dangerous life. He was a suspected gang member who wore a tattoo on his forearm that read “Death before Dishonour,” a criminal who absconded from a halfway house in 2013 where he’d been sent after serving time in prison for gun possession.
Earlier this year Hibbert was arrested by Peel police on drug charges and released into his mom’s custody. She did such a good job that Toronto Police arrested him a few months later in Rexdale for possessing and trafficking crack cocaine — and breaching his bail.
He was released yet again, this time on house arrest and into his father’s custody. He was supposed to make sure his son remained at home, not out at the OVO Fest after-party.
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. …That is why not. It is not in their bible. The opposite is.
each mourning the loss of a child killed by gun violence?
Really ? Gun Violence? Some gun got pissed went mental was filled with hate and on its own went a shot a kid? That is terrible. But then we all know THAT IS NOT WAHAT HAPPENED!
What happened was human being violence with the tool used being a gun. But there is no honesty or integrity in journalist anymore.........
>>Why are people like the Reverend Jackson and the Reverend Sharpton, as well as Father of the Year, Barack Obama, not out there preaching this? Parents make a difference.
<<
The State is the parent — witness breakfast and lunch provided by the State and the dunzil-father.
The one thing The State does not want is an engaged parent.
Wow! This "gun violence" guy sounds like a real jerk.
I hope he gets the death penalty.
I just knew that would be picked up early. Yeah, "gun" violence. That is the state of journalism these days. However, people really need to return to family values. Really. It is so obvious that this is a problem in the cities, and not rural areas, and it is so obvious why.
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