Thursday, July 09, 2009

Because nothing good happened here.

That's a line from this post by artist & writer Tim Broderick, whose blog Odd Jobs appears in the list to the right. Tim was writing about the trial of the man accused of killing Mark "Atwood" Evans, a friend of Tim and Johnny Yen.

That line, "because nothing good happened here", jumped out and stuck with me. I wrote a little bit about the case, and about the impact of murders on the people left behind, in the latest post at Arresting Tales:

Arresting Tales: When the jury comes in...

Johnny Yen has written with much pain and eloquence about his friend Mark, and about this case. You can find some of his posts here.

Reading what Johnny and Tim wrote this past week served as a solemn reminder for me to never forget the families and friends of victims. In searching for information on this case, I could not find any articles in the Tribune or Sun-Times regarding the murder of Mark Evans or Khalif Muhammad, or describing the arrest of Jorge Pena, or of the guilty verdict on Monday.

4 comments:

Doc said...

I have followed Johnny's story for some time now, and as corny as it sounds, I'm reassured that justice has been done.

Doc

SkylersDad said...

I agree with Doc, this has been quite the emotional roller coaster to follow.

Johnny Yen said...

Thanks, Bubs, Doc and SD. Doc, you're absolutely right. I'm not too confident that they'll get a conviction on Mark's case, but I do feel better knowing that the animal who killed him will be in prison until he's an old man.

The irony of it all is that he'd probably have gotten away with it if he hadn't killed his own accomplice. As angry as I was about the kid being an accomplice, I've come to the conclusion that he didn't think that Mark would be killed. And I've also realized that this kid was desperate for friends. He was black, but because he was from Sudan, he spoke poor English and didn't fit in with the other black kids, white kids or any kids. He really thought that the perp was his friend. It's really tragic all around.

Erik Donald France said...

Excellent here and there, thanks to you all for filling in more of the picture.

p.s. weirdly (syncronicity?) wrote about odd jobs.