by Patrick H. Moore
Pretty soon all of our children are going to be dead, or at least it certainly seems that way sometimes. Of course, they’re getting a huge assist from the the firearms manufacturers who seem intent on arming every man, woman and child in the lower 48 states. (Alaska is already so heavily armed that it may have reached the saturation point and as for Hawaii, it kind of hard to carry a concealed weapon when you’re wearing very few clothes due to the warm weather.)
Why am I whining in this unseemly fashion? Very simple. I’m whining because I’m angry that yet another attractive, smart and talented young person has had her life snuffed out in an instant for absolutely no reason other than that a moron happened to be armed. Here’s how it happened:
Premila Lal, an 18-year-old former high school track star of Indian descent, who has been described as “an athlete, popular girl and strong student”, decided to visit a 21-year-old friend of the family named Nerrek Galley, who was staying at a house owned by her family which they had moved out of and were preparing to put on the market. According to Premila’s father, Praveen Lal, upon arriving at the house just before 8:00 pm on Friday night, Premila made the mistake of deciding to play a harmless joke on Galley. She entered the house unbeknownst to 
him and hid in a closet on the premises. When Galley (a gun freak as is demonstrated by photos of him posing with a sub-machine gun in the mountains) walked into the room, she jumped out of a closet to startle him. Galley was startled all right — so startled he grabbed a gun and shot her dead.
The incident happened Friday night in Longmont, a former farming communitygoing hi-tech on the edge of the Rockies about an hour north of Denver.
Premila was accompanied by her 12-year-old cousin who fortunately did not also hide in the closet. If she had, she too might be dead. Premila’s 15-year-old brother, who was (is) pals with Galley, was also there.
Authorities say the father’s description of what happened with the closet and Galley’s gun is consistent with their investigation.
“All the witnesses had consistent statements,” Commander Jeffrey Satur of the Longmont Police Department told CNN Sunday.
A neighbor told CNN’s affilate KVDR that she saw the group rush out of the house, screaming. Lal was taken to a hospital and was pronounced dead about an hour later.
For reasons I do not quite understand, Premila’s father is handling the situation with amazing equanimity:
“We lost a daughter, so we don’t want anybody else to lose their son, you know, especially when it was accident.”
Although it does not appear that Galley will be charged in Premila’s killing, he has been charged with reckless endangerment, child abuse and providing a gun to a juvenile because, according to the police, thanks to Galley, Premila’s 15-year-old brother had access to the gun.
The police have stated that they do not suspect the involvement of alcohol or drugs and that Premila’s death was “unintended and extremely tragic.”
Premila was honored at a weekend cross country meet at her high school which will not bring her back to life.
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Back in the days of the wild west, if we are to believe Clint Eastwood, they used to say: “Hang ‘em high.” Now, however, that’s been changed to: “Just shoot, baby. just shoot.”