This is a tragic tale that is all too common.
I blame the parents. I blame the Department of Human Services, Child Protection and the utter and abject failure of any agency to see this coming, and help avert a tragedy.
And I blame the killer too, I guess. I'll await the evidence on that one.
My wife teaches High School, She teaches those children who require Special Services, in her case those classified "Emotionally Disturbed", or as my son not so charitably put it, "The kids who have no mates". The youth are so not politically correct, but they can, in a childlike way, put things very succinctly.
They have a "mate" in Mrs Twigg. They have an instructor, a counselor, an adviser and yes, when they need it, a shoulder to cry on too. Now one of them is in the County Jail on a first degree murder charge; and my wife is crying on my shoulder. She is quite used to her students getting into scrapes with the law, minor stuff normally, but this? Never this.
The young woman concerned left the school a couple of years ago. Quite what has happened in the interim is anyone's guess, but the start she had in life, was woeful.
Mom was in jail herself, Dad was absent and she was raised by an Uncle whose motives and actions caused concern for years. If ever a girl had cause to be emotionally disturbed, then she did. Honestly, she could hardly have been anything other. The standard of care deemed appropriate in Oklahoma seems to amount to little more than "Are they clothed and are they fed?"
Emotional growth, or lack of, stimulation of the mind and soul, a desire to see that children are given every opportunity to take their rightful place as adults in society? Not so much. I don't know if the other forty nine are better or worse than Oklahoma, but I hope, for the sake of America's children, that Oklahoma is fiftieth by a long way ... I doubt it.
There are law firms, and law suits all over the country alleging negligent practise by Child Protection Agencies, and the clients of those firms are the lucky ones. Mrs Twigg's student will spend, in all likelihood, several decades in prison. She went in a young woman and will emerge a middle aged lady. Probably.
When I met her she was a tiny, shy little girl aged about sixteen. She should have been meeting boys (or girls), looking forward to Prom and have no problems greater than worrying about the odd missed assignment, or her latest crush ... well, we were all there once, we know what she should have been doing.
She wasn't doing those things. She was wearing inappropriate clothes, meeting the wrong people and taking parts in videos while not perhaps pornography, then of dubious quality at best. A little girl wanting to be a woman, but not knowing how. She couldn't, she had never been allowed to be a child.
Then she plunged a knife into a man's chest, and he died.
It is yet to be revealed what could have possibly motivated this extreme action. It is known that it wasn't robbery, that there was some knowledge of each other by the victim and his assailant. Indeed, he identified her before he died.
I hope she has a defense. I hope there is something that provides some mitigation for this terrible deed. Such is the voracious appetite of television that doubtless we will hear all the innuendo and gossip long before any trial; and so no doubt will all the potential jurors.
All I know is that eighteen years of failure turned this young woman out onto the streets utterly unprepared for the rest of her life. She was described in the Police statements as "indigent".
Indifuckinggent .... It's enough to make you spit!
I do accept that people make their own decisions, really I do, but how can we as a society, blame a young woman for making an appalling choice, when we had so ill-equipped her to make good ones?
It's yet another startling irony that the one thing she looked forward to through her latter years in school, was the release of her Mom from prison. It quite blows my mind.
One mad action, two lives completely wasted ..... ::: sigh :::
I want it fully understood that I do not, in any way, think or believe that individual teachers, social workers or other professionals failed this child. Those people are sincere, honest and hard-working. I have little other than admiration for them. The systems they work with, and the Agencies they work for are quite another matter yet even they do not carry the ultimate burden.
That lies fair and square on the shoulders of the various Legislatures up and down the country. They didn't plunge the knife, but they may as well have.
My apologies but there will be no links, no pictures or mugshots. The press reports are all available but they add nothing to this story other than confirmation that it is real. I offer, in this one instance, my reputation as confirmation. I will not link this child's picture here. Thanks for your understanding. Twigg