He was the oldest brother of my first love. This gangly energetic boy who always had a smile on his face. Never took life too seriously, always looked out for me and made sure I felt included- no matter the game being played. He was known as “Crow” in our neighborhood and come to think of it, it was a most fitting nickname- for he definitely looked like one.

As the years passed, our lives shifted until I lost contact with my love and his family; so you can’t even begin to picture the horror of finding out that on April 13, 2014, Crow shot and killed his wife as their children slept and then drove to a secluded parking lot and turned the gun on himself.

Even now I can’t process how someone so loving and so sweet could do something so vicious. How could the boy who shared sunflower seeds and hot chicken fresh out the grease, and protected me as if I was one of his siblings, carry out such monstrous acts?

In all the media coverage that followed I knew better than to think there would be anything that revealed his past, because that’s just not how our society works. There can only be one

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