Gregory Freeman: Woman's Killing Evokes Anger. PD 1/28/1994

Headline: WOMAN'S KILLING EVOKES ANGER
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Fri., Jan. 28, 1994
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 5B, Edition: FIVE STAR

I AM ANGRY today.
I am distraught by the senseless death of Linda Matlock, and I wonder what the world is coming to. Matlock, 39, was shot in the head about 6 p.m. Monday when someone fired a bullet through her kitchen window. She had been helping her daughters with their homework when the bullet struck her.

I knew Linda Matlock.
I didn't know her well and, in fact, hadn't seen her in years. But we attended Beaumont High School together. I knew her as a fun-loving person, with a good sense of humor and a quick wit. She was popular in school and was elected one year a class maid, a part of the homecoming queen's court. At a school with 3,500 kids - the school was quite overcrowded in those days - you had to be pretty popular to win one of those highly sought positions.

Friends who kept up with her through the years told me she had grown up to become a good, loving mother. That didn't surprise me, considering how responsible and warm she had been in high school.
Her concern for her children was obvious the night of her death, as she worked with her youngsters, helping them with homework after making their dinner.

Rachelle Branch-Dix grew up with Matlock. They had known one another since they were youngsters together at Gundlach Elementary School and had remained friends over the years.
"Linda was a very well-adjusted person and very respected in this community, " she said. "You couldn't find anyone with higher morals or who loved her children more.
"The last time I saw her was a couple of Sundays ago with a poodle, a new puppy. She looked great. And then to have this happen. . . . This has left all of us paralyzed."

We all read the homicide statistics in the newspaper and are certainly aware of what's going on around us.
   Still, they really hit home when the homicide victim is someone you know, even if you haven't seen that person in years.
   So I grieve today, as do many others who knew Linda Matlock.
   I grieve for her mother and her children and her other relatives who were touched by her life.

But in my grief, I also feel anger.
It's one thing when someone is out dealing drugs or doing something illegal and gets killed. When you get involved in that sort of thing, you pay your nickel and you take your chances.
But when you can't sit in your own kitchen with your children without fearing that a bullet might come whizzing through your window at any moment, that's quite another.

That's what's behind my anger today. And that's what should anger all of us; that innocent people cannot live normal lives without fear that some idiot with a gun will blow us away.

I'm angry that folks can go around shooting bullets in the air as if this were the Wild Wild West (which, I suspect, may have been tamer than many city streets today).
I'm angry that the police can't round up every one of these gun-toting punks and throw them into jail.
I'm angry that we seemingly live in a city of the blind, where no one ever sees anything when it comes to a shooting.
I'm angry that while money seems to pour out of nowhere for stadiums and riverfront development and all sorts of other projects, the money is never there when the chief of police asks for it to put more officers on the streets.
I'm angry that young punks who are still wet behind the ears are running around packing guns when some of them can't even spell the names of the guns they're carrying.

I want to see them off the streets - both the guns and the punks who think it's their God-given right to fire a gun anywhere they like.

And I know I'm not alone.
   People want to live in a safe environment.
   Matlock was a peace-loving woman. She didn't hang around with the gun-toting crowd.
   The folks who run around shooting guns in cities indiscriminately are not in the majority - not even close.
   It would be ideal if St. Louisans would rally in Matlock's memory and pledge to do everything possible to get rid of the violence - and to take back our city.
   I think Linda would have liked that.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

back