Cuts Like A Knife

I got a comment on one of my entries at my worpress site where I keep a near parallel blog of this one from the sister of one of the guys that had attacked and stabbed Jim. When I first noticed who it was from, I felt really weird, hard to even describe my feelings to be honest. It was with great trepidation that I actually plunged ahead to read what she had written. She wrote the following to me:


First of all, you have to understand what it’s like for the family members of the suspects aswell, considering that Marol was my brother. I know theres no excuse for his actions nor his “friends” but still, after all he is my brother. He’s been in and out of prison but not to long before the incident, he decided that the same “friends” werent going to get him anywhere, my parents have always despised Leo and Patrick, I KNOW FOR A FACT that my brother nor his cousin (that was released not to long after questioning) had constructed any of the stabbing, but from what I know he had pitched in during the beating. But please, I beg for forgiveness and I know for a fact that Marol had’nt intended for any of this to have speculated as far as it has, please take the time to think about his younger sisters and his younger brother before calling them cold hearted killers or “animals” and such, my little sister is only 5 years old and she doesnt even understand any of this thats going on. He’s always been there for her and theres no way that you can tell me hes an “animal” hes always been caring for her. Once again, Im deeply sorry for what happend to your Husband and also sorry for what you’ve gone through. Please take the time to think about his siblings aswell.

One love, **** ******

At first I didn't know what or how I wanted to respond to what she had said. Of course, I felt for her family and her younger siblings, Who wouldn't? But ultimately, it wasn't up to me or my family, but to her own brother who should have thought about his younger brothers and sisters before he went ahead and got involved with this attack. His cousin obviously made the correct moral decision when he decided to try to help me rather than join in on the attack.So could her brother have made the same one but in that instant when he had the choice, he decided to make the wrong one, a decision now I suspect he will end up regretting for the rest of his life.

I ended up sending her what turned out to be kind of a lengthy email which I will reprint here:

Dear ****

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I am sure that this was not an easy thing to do. I am also truly sorry for you and your family as I am sure that it has not been an easy time for any of them.

You know, one of the first things that I thought about as well as talked about to my husband and children were how the mothers of these young men must be feeling right now. I know that as a mother of two teenage girls, I would be shattered if they had been involved in something like this. Jail is not a place that I would wish upon anyone but sometimes, unfortunately it is warranted.

I never called your brother an animal but I did say that the beating was savage and vicious and like nothing I had ever seen before in my life. They attacked him as if they were nothing but savage animals in the wild and at first, it looked as if they were not going to stop until he was dead. To this day, I don't actually know what ended up making them stop and run away from us.

The aftermath was awful. There was my husband's blood everywhere from the 24 stab wounds, three of which were life threatening. They tore open his neck/throat, punctured one of his lungs as well as puncturing his liver. They had to cut open his chest so that they could repair his lung and liver, and now he has a two foot scar where he was cut open. He was on life support for two days as well as being unconscious for another four. Memories of that week are pretty much nonexistent for him although for me they are all to vivd.

He is very lucky to be alive, as at one point the doctors were not certain that he would make it through that first night. Just in case, his parents had their priest give him last rites. While my daughters were not home at the time of the attack, obviously this has affected both of them tremendously. As a family we will never be the same again. Right now my husband is unable to work as he still has a lot more recovering to do and his doctors are unable to give him an answer when he may be able to return to work. The company that we work(ed) for is no longer paying him nor are we receiving benefits from them at this time. He's not even sure if he will have a job to return to as he had not been at this job for a year at the time he was attacked. Hopefully, he will start receiving Workers Compensation soon as we are now suffering financially for something that we had no control over nor even deserved. It has been frustrating on a number of levels.

For us, there are too many unanswered questions as to why this even had to occur. The only thing that we had done was to knock on the door in response to a noise complaint from another tenant. This was the third time that day that we attempted to deal with what was going on in that unit. I, myself, had been up there not twenty five minutes earlier requesting that they stop making as much noise as they were making as well as to ask them to stop throwing whatever it was that they were throwing off the balcony. For that entire day, they had been increasingly disruptive and were disturbing the peace of many of the other tenants.

We weren't even given a chance to say anything to any one of them. After knocking on the door, we were immediately rushed and attacked with absolutely no warning nor provocation. I am sorry but this is by no means normal behavior nor do I believe, remotely acceptable. If you haven't had a chance to see any of the news reports of the incident, you can check out one of them right HERE. It's a bit graphic, but it gives you an idea how much damage was done to my husband.

Of course, I feel for his younger brothers and sisters and my prayers will go out to them, but more importantly, if he had truly cared for them or was concerned at all for their wellbeing then he should have been the one thinking about them.

Good luck to both you and your family. I wish no one any ill will. I am trusting that with time, we shall all be able to put this incident behind us and hopefully become all the stronger for it.

******