When is a child a killer?
How that must burn, Rod. How it must eat you alive in whatever dark corner they’ve stuck you. You were so close. Fifteen.
Daily TribuneHow that must burn, Rod. How it must eat you alive in whatever dark corner they’ve stuck you. You were so close. Fifteen.
The kid Rod, the loser, the big dummy here, he’s 15! And because he’s not 14, because his mom couldn’t wait a year more, he’s getting hammered — three murder charges, frustrated murder, the whole rigged system. A lifetime of prison energy for the poor sap who probably just scratched an itch and fired a single shot! One!
His little 14-year-old bud, Baby Nash the Butcher, the trigger man, this punk allegedly blasts away, mows down three kids, wounds 20, reloads like a pro, the whole massacre — what happens to him?
“Ohhh, he’s only 14!” Still has that pre-pubescent glow that makes lawmakers weak in the knees. Get him an intervention program! Cookies. A little pat on the head: “Go play video games, kid. See you at 18, kid. Enjoy your life, you magnificent little psychopath!”
Rod? The liberals can only chime in: “Ikaw ang kuya. You were the big brother. You should have guided him.”
How that must burn, Rod. How it must eat you alive in whatever dark corner they’ve stuck you. You were so close. Fifteen. Practically there. You could have had the girls, the stupid mistakes, while Nash gets to have all the fresh start like God intended. Parties. The whole teenage debut Rod just missed by one year. Maybe, at 18, Rod is finally going to buy his own motorcycle. Stupid dream. Now somebody else will ride it.
That’s all it took for the 15-year-old to lose the rest of his life right when it was about to start, like the brain is a microwave you set to 15 and --- ding! --- roasted! Juvy Law. Ultimate blue-baller: one year separates a kid who can die a virgin in prison from one who gets to live the teenage dream after the rampage.
At most, 365 days is the difference between an irredeemable monster and a misunderstood little brother who just needed some love.
Rod’s tragedy is that he still insists it was just one shot. “A warning shot.” That it was too small for the scale of the charge.
That is childhood at its most dangerous: the belief that you can touch the edge of evil and still pull your hand back clean. One puff, maybe. A swig. One attempt to belong. One attempt to prove fear had left his body.
You don’t get to lick a live wire and complain the electricity overreacted. You don’t push one domino and say, “I only touched the first one.”
Rod does not need to own the fatal bullet if prosecutors can prove he joined the fatal plan and helped create the killing field.
One shot is too small a coffin for a month of alleged choices.
It had history behind it. The chat, the plan, the stolen guns, the long month in which the idea had every chance to scurry back to childhood.
He then stood through the flag ceremony, went to the washroom, met Nash, walked the campus, searched for the target, failed to find him, and still did not turn back.
So when Rod says “one shot,” I say one bridge. And he kept crossing it.
So tell us, Rod. Was the first shot meant to prove something to Nash, or to yourself?
Did you fire because you wanted to, or because backing out felt more humiliating than going through with it?
Now ask Nash the same questions.