Dogs and Bones

I admit I'm like a dog with a bone on the Davidson/McLaurin murders. I promise I'll stop when those whole thing makes a little sense, but let me try again to explain how my needle got stuck in this groove. 1. Ever since the Krayeske case -- when it was abundantly clear that the Hartford police administration was willing to twist facts, ignore its own officers' reports and offer completely implausible accounts about an arrest -- I've made a mental note to ask questions about how they handle other stuff.  As I've said at great length, I think they went out of their way to try to bury the news of a West Hartford football player murdered on the street, rather than getting the facts out in a crisp, above-board manner. 2. I think The Courant, particularly in its headline, bought the story without a lot of reflection. "Robbery Led To Slayings."  Really? We know that? Not "Police Speculate: Robbery Led to Slayings"? So far, the only proof offered of a robbery is the claim that both victims were wearing ski masks.  Whom did they rob? What did they take? The city leadership has a vested interest in pushing a subtext of "murdered kids sort of deserved it" especially in a hotly contested election year. I'd like to see the Courant be more skeptical and less credulous about these claims. 3. That story, fueled (it must be said) by McLaurin family interviews, begins to construct a (as one commenter said) good kid/bad kid narrative. The good kid was from West Hartford. the bad kid was from Hartford. The story kind buries a detail that the bad kid was incredibly sick with thyroid cancer which put him in a one-month coma in a hospital prison ward. The bad/sick kid was now, apparently,  on a protocol of medications. Thyroid problems can mess with mood and behavior. This may have been -- to a certain degree-- a sick kid who had a lot of trouble controlling himself. 4. McLaurin's sister, living in California, has been taking an active role in a spirited and often ugly debate on one of those Topix forums.  Not surprisingly, she doesn't see her brother as the bad kid, but a lot gets said in those forums that doesn't make it into news stories. (Boy, if you want to read a bunch of comments from yahoos who think the murdered kids deserved it, hold your nose and plunge in.) Here is one poster offering an (allegedly informed) working hypothesis that has the advantage of making a tiny bit more sense than the current official police account: since i live in west hartford where both the victims lived and went to school with both of them, I can say for a fact that almost everyone who went to school with these kids or lives in our town knew who they were within 24 hours of the murders.(This strikes me as odd because it took so very long for the newspapers to report their names) I'm going to set this straight for all you oddly twisted people who have this strange fascination in the deaths of two teens with whom you most likely have no sort of connection to. I am telling you what actually happened and if you choose not to accept my version then so be it but, this is what you can take as a reliable source of information and not the sudden solution to the problem of two kids deaths which the HPD grabbed out of thin air. The victims names were Xion Davidson, 17, of 1165 New Britain Avenue in West Hartford, and Kent McLaurin, 19, of 153 Beacon St., Hartford. This was not some huge conspiracy or massive gangland war like some of you have proposed and they were not going to rob someone as the newspaper has reported so suddenly. In fact if what went on between the killers and victims leading up to the murders had taken place in most other towns, it would have ended with a few kids going home with bloody noses. Kent and Xion had been fighting with some kids in a nearby neighborhood for some time, but not in the sense of gangs, merely an unknown dispute between teenagers. The two victims went over to the neighborhood of the kids they had been fighting with in order to vandalize their cars or houses in some unknown way, and this is why they were wearing masks, not so that they could rob someone. Keep in mind for any of you thinking that they still deserved their fate because they were taking part in criminal activity, that many of you have probably toilet papered a house or egged someones car who you didnt like while you were in high school. It is certainly not respectable behavior, but it is not the kind of behavior that should end in deaths. Xion and Kent were caught in the act of vandalizing and were beaten up by the group of kids. Xion and Kent then fled from the neighborhood probably assuming that the worst was over and the other kids were satisfied with the beating. This is the part where an average if mischievous night turned deadly. For reasons unknown to myself and all you experts out there, the other kids did not feel satisfied with the beating and instead decided that a harsher punishment needed to be inflicted. Kent and Xion were pretty badly beaten and so were walking back home after they had split up in different directions. They were hunted down by kids whos sense of moral rightness was so far out of whack that they felt the need to execute these two youths for a simple prank. That is what happened and that is the truth and it does dishonor to Kent and Xions memories for you people to argue and bicker over their final moments like school children arguing about who is smarter. It seems to me that a large portion of you are adults and after reading the filth that some of you have written in your quest to further satisfy your ego, it is clear to me that age certainly does not grant wisdom, since I am 17 years old, the same age as Xion and i am making a more rational and cohesive argument than many of you. OK, that makes only a tiny bit more sense.

Comments

[Tom the toy designer]

Half the tragedy in this case is yet to unfold, the unraveling of the shooter(s) lives. The truth will out sooner or later, the shooter(s) will be brought to justice or destroy themselves from within. But in the meantime we should all be very disturbed, that a community is hiding the person or persons that committed these cold blooded, shotgun-in-the-face-of-a-kneeling-victim murders. Lets face it, probably at least a half dozen young people know exactly what happened and who did what. Maybe more. Some may have conspired. What effect is that going to have on their lives and ours? More violence? Suicides? How comfortable are we having them in our community unpunished? It's time for the West Hartford community to ask its young people, where were you, who did it, whose gun was it, what do you know about this. The community needs to get this out in the open and face the music before the tragedy is multiplied.

[eba]

As the mother of boys this age all Conard grads I sympathize with the family and friends of these 2 young men whose lives were so brutally taken. There are no bad kids, but there are bad environements for them to learn from and Hartford is full of them.
It outrages me to think and hear people talk about them as though they were evil kids. I agree they may have been misdirected at times.
The Courant should be ashamed to have headlined these deaths as robbery related,what a ridiculous assumption and insult to the intelligence of your readers.
The killers need to be found and dealt.The community that these kids live in should start talking to save the next young lives at stake. It is my understanding that the Hartford police don't have a grip on who did this and they need help. I implore those who know to talk.

[A friend]

colin, you are correct in your assumption that the cops were withholding the information because the families of the victims were informed late Thursday afternoon of the identities, so there was plenty of time to release the information to the evening news.

[Genghis Conn]

This whole case points up how the media and everyone else kind of ignores violence in Hartford. I have a relative, a suburban guy, who got shot in Hartford a month or so ago (drug deal gone bad--he lived). There were three sentences (literally, three) in the Courant about it, buried in "News Briefs," in the same article as a library seeking book donations and a school board reception.

Meanwhile, if the event had taken place in Newington or West Hartford, I imagine it would be much bigger news.

[Jennifer Warner Cooper]

Anonymous comment threads are full of filth and hatred. No surprise to me anymore, sadly.

But they also give voice to those like the young author of that post, who otherwise would have been silent, most likely.

I'll wade through the sludge to get to that.

[jd]

I just don't think the focus should be on what time the Hartford Police Department announced the victims' names. I think the focus should be on stopping gang violence.

By the way, both the Hartford and West Hartford Police Departments believe that McLaurin was in a gang. In fact, his own father was quoted as saying that his son chose a thug lifestyle, that he was in and out of juvenile detention centers three times in three years, that "He didn't want to listen to authority. He had a dual nature. He was loving around the family, and around his friends he took on a dark nature," that he displayed a "sense of blind, displaced loyalty for his friends," that he rejected appeals by his older brother to stop "acting like a thug," that he stayed out late, if he came home at all. His own brother was quoted as saying "He had a double life" and "He was all right here, but when he left home he was out robbing people."

How much more proof do you want, Colin?

[martha]

Isn't it the policy of the PD to withhold from public knowledge the identity of a dead person until next of kin is informed? I have been following this story and appreciate the light your blog has shone on it, but don't understand your assertion that delaying the IDs of the victims until the following night had a sinister (political) motive. Couldn't it just be that the PD couldn't locate the appropriate family members?

[jd]

Wait a minute, so what's your point, Colin? You suspect a cover-up by the Hartford Police? Sure. Maybe. But that doesn't change the fact that these kids were running around getting into fights in the middle of the night while wearing ski masks, at 5 am. That doesn't usually end in a bloody nose.

It was a dumb thing to do and their families are certainly hurting, but come on, let's hold these kids accountable. How about instead of fantasizing about a cover-up, we broadcast the fact that if you roll with a gang, you may end up shot? Which course of action will prevent more kids from being killed like this?

COLIN WRITES BACK: YOU wait a minute. How about -- oh, gee, I don't know -- PROVING something? Nobody has proven these guys were in a gang. Nobody has proven they committed a robbery. Those are just ideas being floated as pseudo-facts.

Point of clarity: I am not saying the police covered up anything. I'm saying I believe they dragged out the ID process for 36 hours to get it to Friday night. And I'm saying they are now floating a theory that doesn't -- until more facts are added to support it-- make a whole lot of sense.

And oh, I think the two victims have already been held pretty "accountable." What with being dead and all.

So I'll meet you halfway on this one. Here's a crazy idea: First the cops actually SOLVE the crime. Then I'll participate in some prevention messages. Right now, your plan is apparently to say: Don't do ...whatever those two guys ...were doing.

[btw]

Looking at the link to topix is very revealing. Racism is indeed alive and well.

[Terrence McCarthy]

You're all over this one like a June Bug on a screen door. That's good. That's good.

[mick]

Colin, it frustrates me that "the media" doesn't do more to shine lights on all the corruption and questionable doings around us in the state and the nation. The same is obviously true for the its coverage of city news, too. But you're one of them, you're on the inside. Certainly you can't control the actions of the Courant or WTIC but it would seem that you could at least push them in the right direction. Are they really part of the MSM and controlled by aliens?

[David Edelstein]

The 17-year-old who wrote the post above is a sharp and nuanced writer--the kind of writer the Courant (or any other publication) should jump to employ. I find his or her account completely credible, alas.

[Chuck]

I would not be surprised to see the Courant downplay this story. In the long run it is to their advantage to portray hartford as turning itself around and not descending into another Brodgeport or Waterbury. I remember years ago when there was a problem with "undesireables" at the Darien Howard Johnson's mens rooms the Stamford Advocate would not publich the arrest reports in their police blotter. The reason given was "thats now hop we want to portray Darien"

If you told me it was a robbery gone wrong and the two dead men were victims I would believe it more than they went into Hartford to rip off drug dealers. No one is that dumb.

[joejoejoe]

Stay with this story.

Shining a light on all the different actors in this sad, horrible event is the best service you can provide your readers. It's your community and there will be a time for laughing stories later but now is the time for exactly what you are doing. Keep up the good work.

[Jude]

Thanks for not letting go of this particular bone....

[Waquoit]

And folks wonder why Hartford magnet schools haven't been able to attract suburban students.

[Allen Marko]

One thing that came to mind when I read about these murders is that this is the type of thing we expect to read about happening on the streets of Baghdad, not the streets of our State's Capitol. I'm sure that played into the decision to attempt to bury and spin the story.