Dear Editor,
The question haunting most people is how? How can a person carry out such a brutish blitz asks a recent newspaper editorial. And how could anyone comprehend the “horror of the two children in the final seconds of their life as they cowered and sought the protection of their mother who was also brutally gunned down. Or the mother who saw her children lined up before her eyes and mowed down. Or the wife who saw her husband being dragged from under the bed and being blasted in the head. Or the child in hospital barely clinging to life unaware that two of his cherished siblings and his father are no more”?
Could the beastly be tempted to execute such devilish acts as the massacre at Lusignan? Could criminal insanity be instigated? Some believe it could.
For some time now certain newspapers have been providing lengthy column inches to bigots spouting hate against a specific ethnic group. Some say a few TV programmes are even worse in provoking racial animosity. Miscreants, soaking up such racist bile found it easy to blame others for their own personal inadequacy; they found it easy to project blame for their own self-inflicted misery onto those who are innocent and defenceless.
Vincent Alexander, in the Stabroek News of February 2 attempts to tell us how atrocities like the slaughter of eleven, including children, could happen. He craves our indulgence by pleading with us to “understand how our society has produced ruthless killers.”
Alexander says there are “causal factors and catalysts” for such beastly behaviour and he was saddened that no one has focused on “the socio-economic policies and programmes that are intended to reduce and eliminate the environment that breeds” the beasts in some people.
Perhaps Mr. Alexander can tell us how many jobs the killer “Fineman” Rawlins applied for in the past; perhaps he can tell us how many schools Fineman applied to; perhaps he knows of all the attempts Fineman made to learn a professional trade? Did he want to be an accountant like the 22-year-old he shot to death? Did he try farming like the farmers he mowed down in their sleep?
Perhaps Mr Alexander can write to the press detailing all the personal attempts Fineman made to live a good and decent life and then he will show us how the 11 dead people in Lusignan thwarted Fineman’s valiant efforts to be a productive citizen.
Yours faithfully,
Justin de Freitas
