Murder and assault crimes occur everyday. The thing is though; they’re usually for some reason or another- domestic disputes, theft related, hate … it could really be anything.
But sometimes people kill or hurt others for no reason, and it makes you step back for a minute and seriously question humanity. When there’s a reason for it, one can maybe wrap their head around the fact that it happened. But when there is no reason, we’re left thinking, “What is wrong with people?”
For example, a 20-year-old man was shot in Wilkes-Barre after an argument broke out over a domestic-related situation involving his family and other persons. While shooting someone over any argument is wrong, unnecessary, and irrational in every sense of those words, there was a reason for that man to take his gun out and shoot his victim.
Even if that argument wasn’t major, the man had a motive. Something initiated the action.
But not all crimes “make sense.”
Thinking back to mid-January, you might remember that a man was caught on camera dragging a woman from a bench across subway platform and onto the tracks in Philadelphia.
This story is simple. The man allegedly asked the woman for a lighter, which she gave to him, waited a few seconds, and then punched the woman in the face and grabbed her by the neck. He then proceeded to drag the woman toward the tracks for no reason at all, turned around, stole her cell phone and walked away like nothing was wrong.
A completely meaningless act.
A similar senseless crime occurred more recently where two teenage boys were charged with the murder of a 13-month-old boy in a stroller pushed by his mother. One of the boys demanded money from the woman, threatening to kill her and her baby if she didn’t hand it over.
The woman repeatedly told the boys that she didn’t have any money and pleaded with them not to kill her baby.
Ignoring her pleas, one of the boys shot the woman in the leg and then walked over to her stroller and shot the child in the face.
A horrific incident initiated out of sheer anger and aggravation.
Both events are hard to understand because they’re completely senseless acts of violence. In both news write-ups, it was stated that there were no motives for either crime.
So why do people harm others out of pure aggravation? In the grand scheme of the situation, was dragging that woman onto the subway tracks worth the price of his punishment? He got his lighter, so what was the problem?
In the shooting incident, the same questions can be asked.
Was first-degree murder REALLY a necessary response to not obtaining a little bit of cash? We’re looking at lifetimes in jail or potentially even death sentences for that kind of unthinkable action.
Do killers like this even think of the consequences when they shoot sporadically like it’s an everyday thing? There seems to be a diconnect with the cause-and-effect mechanism in their brains.
Perhaps the saddest part of the story is that losing the woman’s 13-month-old son was not her first loss to violence. In 2008, her 18-year-old son was killed in New Jersey during an attack by other teens on a dark street.
While motives can’t always be found for cases like this, the sad reality is that people often do kill or harm for no reason. It’s an extremely sad and harsh reality for individuals to grasp because there’s nothing there analyze in order to make sense of the situation.
Humans often need reasons for actions like this so they can understand why those bad things happen. It’s in our nature to struggle to conclude something, as difficult as that may be in these types of situations.
So instead, the completely undeserving victims are left asking the basic question “Why? Why did this happen to me?”
But there is no answer. People don’t know why they hurt other people, they just do.
