06 Jan A random murder contextualized
I’ve been re-watching Season 5 of The Wire, perhaps the best television series ever produced. Season 5 focuses on the Baltimore Sun, and features delicious score-settling by David Simon, the former Sun police reporter who created the series with Ed Burns, a former homicide detective in the city.
The Wire shows how thoroughly the harm caused by the war on drugs eclipses the harm caused by drugs themselves. Thank heaven Canada now has a federal government committed to legalizing—not namby-pamby “de-criminalizing,” whatever that is, but legalizing—marijuana. May legalization of heroin, cocaine, and the rest follow promptly.
So my ears perked up, a moment ago, when a dispatch about a Baltimore murder appeared in my Facebook feed, courtesy of my daughter-in-law, Jenn Power. It originated with Connie Schultz, a columnist at Creators Syndicate, who began with a little background:
On August 26, 2015, the Baltimore City Paper ran the following blurb about a shooting earlier that month:
“8:46 p.m. Thelonius Monk, a 28-year-old African-American man, was on the 500 block of South Catherine Street when someone shot him at least once in the chest. He made it to a hospital but died there soon after. Monk resided on the 2600 block of St. Benedict, about two blocks west of where he was killed. He was murdered just outside of the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood, about three blocks west of where another 28-year-old man was shot 24 hours before.”
This morning, a post by Adam Marton showed up in my newsfeed — and it stopped me in my tracks. Marton is Senior Editor of Interactive Design at the Baltimore Sun, and his life once intersected with Thelonius Monk’s.
Adam Marton wrote:
Thelonius Monk, 28, was one of Baltimore’s 344 homicide victims in 2015. Thelonius stole my car about a decade ago and while he was never charged with the crime, case search shows he was arrested dozens of times in his short life and spent time in a juvenile detention center. He fished my keys out of the night drop at Mr. Tire one summer night.
It was barely an inconvenience, such is my life. Insurance covered a loaner and Brooke and I went on vacation, as planned. When I got my car back a few weeks later, Thelonius had installed a baby seat and a subwoofer and the car was strewn with job applications. It was and remains one of the most heartbreaking scenes of my life.
Our lives crossed, however oddly and briefly, and I can’t help but think that Thelonius probably never had a chance. A chance to escape, a chance to succeed. The opportunities I have always enjoyed. I feel like maybe he was trying to use my car to make a break for it. I wish he had made it. Rest in peace, young man, I will never forget you.
[Photo: Baltimore Sun]