In a city where murder has become a way of life, we’re still horrified

In a city where murder
has become a way of life, we’re still horrified

Youngstown’s first murders of 2008 will go down in history as the most deadly and among the most callous and the most senseless on record. Six members of three generations of an East Side family — mother, daughter and four grandchildren — are dead, suffocated by the smoke of a fire set at their East Side home.

The stuffed animals and assorted tributes stacking up outside the burned-out house at 1645 Stewart Avenue have been left in tribute to Carol Crawford, 46, her daughter Jennifer R. Crawford, 23, and Jennifer’s four children, Ranaisha, 8; Jeannine, 5; Aleisha, 3; and Brandon, 2. All died Wednesday morning when fire raced from the first floor and up the stairs within a matter of minutes.

They leave behind brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces and other relatives for whom life will never be the same. Friends, coworkers and classmates are left in shock.

No shortage of history

We have decried before the culture of violence that has resulted in Youngstown having one of the highest homicide rates in the nation. History has shown that children are killed in drive-by shootings. Witnesses to one homicide are themselves murdered before they can testify in court. People are murdered two, three and four at a time. Teenagers kill other teenagers over a little bit of marijuana, a few dollars or a pair of shoes. One man shoots another in cold blood at a youth football game, in front of players, cheerleaders and fans. A store clerk is gunned down for no apparent reason. A woman is drowned in a creek by her attacker after she stops him from shooting her by throwing his gun away.

Thus have people died cruelly in Youngstown in recent years. Some of those murders have caused a sensation and sparked calls in the community for reform. Others got headlines, but were quickly forgotten by all but those closest to them.

By all known accounts, the Crawfords lost their lives as part of a neighborhood feud, possibly bought to a climax by the theft of a cell phone. Michael Davis, 18, is charged with six counts of aggravated murder and 11 counts of aggravated arson in the early Wednesday blaze on Stewart Avenue. His mother maintains his innocence, but acknowledges that he was angry after Julius Crawford, who managed to escape from his family’s burning home, had answered when Davis called the number of his stolen phone.

Could anyone set fire to an occupied dwelling over petty larceny and rank deception? Time and the legal system, presumably, will tell. But if that turns out to be the case, nothing will be able to explain the new low to which respect for human life has sunk.

Wait until the dawning

During his videotaped arraignment, Davis seemed unaware of the gravity of his situation. He faces possible prosecution in a death penalty case. The aggravating circumstances of causing multiple deaths during the commission of a felony make him a candidate for execution under Ohio law.

If he is convicted, even if he were to avoid the death penalty, his life as he has known it for 18 years is over. He will never again know freedom. He will not take another step outside prison or jail without being shackled. He will never decide where he will live or what he is going to have for dinner (save, perhaps, that last meal). He’ll be told when to go into his cell and when he can come out.

And for the rest of his life he’ll have to live with the knowledge that people he knew, children too young to do him any harm or even cause him a slight, had their lives cut horribly short because of his own depraved indifference.

Youngstown’s first murders of 2008 are different, but only in number and manner and ability to horrify. They are, like all the other homicides in this impoverished city, a reflection of one person’s determination that his phone or his drugs or his pride or his pleasure was more important than another person’s life.

It is all so very, very sad.