Killings that don't make the headlines deserve our outrage too

[mimi85]

Sandy Banks (great writer, imo)
August 24, 2013

One more 'very, very innocent victim' dies in L.A., and the epidemic of black-on-black homicide rages on, scarcely noticed except by the grieving.

Marsha Jones Shoushtari went back to work on Tuesday, two weeks after her youngest child, her only son, died after being shot on Crenshaw Boulevard.

But she can't escape the unfinished business that homicides entail.

On Tuesday, police visited her office to return her son's cellphone, the "effects" of an 18-year-old. On Wednesday, she and husband Manochehr visited the cemetery to arrange for their son's burial; the coroner had just released the body.

Through it all, some part of her is trying to believe this might not be real. "He cannot be gone. This is crazy," she told her brother, when he called to check on her this week.

But it is real. And it's also crazy.

It's like if you or I were driving up the street and being shot at," said LAPD homicide detective Sal LaBarbera.

Bijan Shoushtari was riding in a buddy's tricked-out classic Buick on a Saturday night when a car pulled up alongside and someone fired shots. Bijan was hit and died two days later at Cedars-Sinai. Neither Bijan nor the friends with him had ever been in trouble or had any affiliation with gangs.

"He could have been my kid," LaBarbera said. "Or yours. He was a very, very innocent victim."

So why are we not as outraged about the death of Bijan Shoushtari as we were about the death of Trayvon Martin?

His family printed 500 programs for Bijan's memorial service last week, and the booklets ran out as quickly as the seats.

Westminster Presbyterian Church was packed. People crowded the balcony, lined the aisles, filled the hallways, parlor, and choir room and spilled down the front steps onto the sidewalk along Jefferson Boulevard.

I crammed myself into a niche that smelled faintly of marijuana, next to a teenage boy wearing a baseball cap backward and crying unashamedly. It was the sort of crowd where it didn't seem odd for a stoic old man in a yarmulke to help a sobbing young stranger, decorated with tattoos, settle her restless toddlers.

Bijan's oldest sister, Samantha Shoushtari, told me she was surprised by the turnout. "I didn't realize so many people knew my brother."

But it wasn't just her little brother they had come to mourn. They were grieving a loss of innocence; her family's and their own.

Read more:
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0824-banks-homicide-20130824,0,6535241,full.column

[shenmue]

1. :(

I can't imagine how horrible it is to be told that you've lost a loved one through violence. Whenever I watch "The First 48," the hardest part to see is when the family and neighbors learn the news.

[RC]

2. We need to stop the gun mentality, before we can stop the killing.

It is way to easy to just point your killing machine at someone or something and pull the easy to work trigger.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. I started to tear up a little reading this....

just too much of it.

[JustAnotherGen]

4. Black on black homicide

Most definitely is a topic of concern in the black community.

It's getting the dominant culture /race owned media to care that's the issue. Lots of black folks were lynched in the 1950's. But sometimes to "get through" to the dominant culture - a child hits the mark. As it went with Emnett and 4 little girls attending church - So it goes with Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis.

So we have to ask the question - who was the author of this article trying to reach?

[Supersedeas]

5. Tim McNerney

Absolutely no headlines on this case.