commentary by Patrick H. Moore
As the days pass and one violent crime follows hard on the heels of the previous violent crime, I find myself beginning to despair – the world is badly askew — and although the statistics apparently show that violent crime is not nearly as out of control as it was prior to 2,000, you wouldn’t know it based on the daily crime news.
Violent criminals seem to have endless bad reasons for taking their victims’ lives, or in some cases, attempting to take their victims lives. Just this morning, a case came my way via the Crime Library which may be the supreme head-scratcher with respect to why did this moron try to kill an innocent woman and her daughter?
Cora Van Olson of Crime Library writes:
Jessie White, 25, a business management student at DeVry Universtiy, had apparently just relieved himself in the basement of an abandoned coach house and was casually sitting on the nearby steps of Chicago’s St. Pancratius Church on Tuesday afternoon. He watched as a young mother walked her daughter, 8, home from school. White would later reportedly tell police that the two seemed happy, and that it overwhelmed him with rage. That’s when, prosecutors say, White attacked them.
Assistant State’s Attorney Erin Antonietti described the situation at a hearing the next day, “He saw the 26-year-old woman and her child and how happy they were, and it made him angry.” According to Antonietti, “When [White] sees a happy situation … his reaction is to violently attack this woman and try to kill her.”
Now we all know that envy is a very dangerous and negative emotion and that it can make people do things that, in some cases, they will regret for the rest of their lives. Although I certainly can’t speak for Mr. White, given the mess he’s gotten himself into, it may be safe to assume that he wishes that he had not reacted violently to the sight of the happy mother and child.
Here’s what this peculiar business management student reportedly did:
First he launched himself at mother and child, knocking the girl to the ground. Then he pulled a knife on the woman and pressed it to her throat. The child tried to come to her mom’s rescue by throwing her backpack at the assailant as her mother screamed for help. The woman appears to have fought for her life valiantly; in any event, White was unable to quickly slit her throat. As they struggled over the knife, the blade became disconnected from the handle and slid out, apparently falling to the ground, which meant that when White tried to stab the woman in the head, there was no blade, and all he managed was to strike her in the head with the blunt handle.
Along with fighting a truly good fight, the girl’s mother had the presence of mind to shout for her daughter to get help and she had followed her instructions to the letter after ineffectively flinging her backpack at White.
According to prosecutors, after failing to stab his intended victim, White dragged her into the basement of the abandoned coach house which he knew was unlocked because he had just urinated there. (How the prosecutors know about White bathroom habits is somewhat of a mystery unless White told them, but the same could be said about his anger management problems.) In any event, once White had the victim in his power in the basement, he reportedly struck her repeatedly and strangled her to unconsciousness while shouting, “I’m going to kill you! I have to kill you!”
Luckily, at this point, the woman’s husband arrived followed by police. White was pulled off the battered woman, arrested and charged with attempted murder and multiple counts of aggravated battery.
Erin Meyer of DNA info Chicago writes:
A staff member at St. Pancratius Church at Sacramento and 40th Place said White was not affiliated with the church, and no one at the church witnessed the incident.
The mother he allegedly attacked is recovering from bruises to her neck and body and other minor injuries, prosecutors said.
White was ordered held without bail.
Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil called it a “stranger-danger situation involving a mother and a child,” and ordered White held without bail.
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If the allegations turn out to have substance, we can probably safely assume that the only “business management” White will be doing for the next several decades is managing the sale and re-sale of prison contraband.
The fact that he flew into such a rage at the sight of a happy mother and child suggests that his own childhood may have been unhappy and perhaps abusive, though at this point, we don’t know for sure.
What is unsettling is the fact that in today’s America, it is actually possibly for a mother to be attacked and nearly killed simply for having a happy child whom she apparently loves dearly.