Gone and Pretty Well Damned Near Forgotten

As of June 10th there have been no arrests and there are no suspects in the Los Angeles gangland murder of 14 month old baby boy, Angel Mauro Cortez-Nava.  You might accidentally remember Angel since I just wrote about his murder a few days ago in the obviously forgettable post, The Black Teenage Boy in the Hoodie.


There are no suspects and no arrests in spite of the fact that the murderer rode by on a bicycle and shot into a crowd gathered on little Angel's front lawn.


There are no suspects and no arrests in spite of a $100,000.00 REWARD offered by the Los Angeles City Council and the LA Kings Hockey Team.


There are no arrests and no suspects in spite of the well known gang activity in the neighborhood, multiple previous murders and the attention of the LA Police Gang Crime Unit.


A quick review of Google News Feeds show there have been no news updates on this story for three days.


The Silence of the Lambs.


Angel will be forgotten, except by his family. Even I will undoubtedly stop blogging about this story eventually.  Based on the overwhelming outpouring of comments so far, no one actually cares.

Oh, and for those who care about that "other" murder, you know the one where the black teenage boy wearing a hoodie was killed in a scuffle in a "gated community" by a neighborhood watch patrol member.  That suspect, George Zimmerman, is still in jail, awaiting trail for the murder.  That trial will receive maximum 24 hour news coverage.

UPDATE: (6/29/2012) A fifteen year old boy, Donald Ray Dokins, has been arrested for the murder of Angel Cortez. The Los Angeles District Attorney has said he will be charged as an adult and faces life in prison.  Donald is suspected in other murders.

The Black Teenage Boy in the Hoodie

Back on April 2nd I wrote that the Trayvon Martin murder got so much press because it was so exceedingly rare.  Indeed, people are almost never murdered in gated communities by Neighborhood Watch patrols.  And blacks are rarely killed by whites in any communities. I don't mean to minimize Trayvon Martin's murder. Trayvon Martin deserves justice.


But, as I mentioned in that earlier article, similar murders in poor, urban communities are tragically common, so common almost no one outside of the affected families ever bothers to notice.  Not the media, most certainly. But not even the black leaders like Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton, who dominated the media during the Trayvon Martin investigation.


There are thousands of such murders every year, ignored and quickly forgotten.  And one more occured two days ago.  Like the Travon Martin murder this also involved and black teen in a hoodie and a 24 year old Latino male.  But this one happened in the Watts area of Los Angeles.

But this time the victim was a tiny one year old baby boy, Angel Mauro Cortez-Nava, and the murderer was the black teenage boy in the hoodie.  Today police are still searching for the murderer, who shot and killed the baby and wounded the father in their own front year.  The teen shot the two as he rode by on his bicycle.


The murder was probably part of a wave of gang killings between the rival black gang, Fudgetown and the Latino gang, the Hispanic Barrio Grape Street Gang. Little Angels father was wearing a purple sweatshirt at the time of the shooting, but his friends and family claim he had no gang affiliation.


The police say this is just one of a half dozen killings in the neighborhood in the last year.


Maria Trujillo, a family friend and neighbor spoke for the entire community when she was interviewed by the media, "With these shootings going on, you don't feel safe in your own front yard,"


"I have seen plenty of people pass away here. For a child to go, this has to stop immediately," neighbor Marcus Williams said. "When a child, a child, a baby, this kid didn't have a chance at life. It really hurt. I'm afraid to let my kids play in the yard now. This is right across the street." 


If only we could generate national press and outrage over this killing.  If only community leaders and national leaders like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton would get involved in these acts of violence, perhaps we could begin to put this epidemic of violence to an end.


What if President Obama stood at a press conference and said little Angel Cortez looked like one of  his children?

The Silence of the Lambs

Above is a Photo-shopped image of George Zimmerman 

being used by the @killzimmerman account on Twitter

I'd like to believe that everyone wants justice for Trayvon Martin.  His death at the hands of George Zimmerman (in the photo-shopped picture above) is tragic and very possibly criminal.  I hope a thorough investigation is possible, but I'm beginning to have my doubts.  The problem isn't the Federal and State judicial system which is working hard (if belatedly) to provide answers, it's the mob violence being championed by the leaders on the left.


I find what's happening on the "left" side of the political spectrum here in the United States to be upsetting, even distressing.  People I thought shared the values of justice, honesty, fairness, restraint, kindness, cooperation and dialogue have become an American Taliban, fundamentalists demanding everyone hold their narrow minded bigoted views or face certain annihilation.  


That many of these people call themselves "Liberal" is a tragic joke.  A joke that as of today is no longer funny.


These people are a disgrace to liberalism.  They are, in fact, a disgrace to the human race.


The list starts with virtually every so-called journalist and on-air personalities on MSNBC. It extends to the bastions of the liberal blogosphere with The Huffington Post and Daily Kos and flows down stream to the tens of thousands on Twitter and Facebook who are demanding the death of George Zimmerman without benefit of an investigation or a trial.  The New Black Panther Party has placed a ONE MILLION DOLLAR bounty on Zimmerman's head., dead or alive.


You'll find no condemnation or even mild criticism of this action anywhere in the left media or blogosphere.  The same folks who spent weeks condemning Sarah Palin for using "cross hairs" on a political map, don't think the call for vigilante justice against Zimmerman is ever worth a sentence in their blogs.  It isn't worth one minute of their valuable air time on television.


And if Zimmerman is killed, these same so-called liberal pundits will rush to the defense of the perpetrator, blaming the "system" for it's failure to bring swift justice for young Trayvon.


Curiously, these same liberal activists will protest by the thousands outside a prison to protest the execution of a convicted murderer, but they're happy to cheer lead the murder someone who hasn't had the benefit of a trial.


One Twitter user has adopted the name @killzimmerman and spews hate and death threats 24 hours a day.  Twitter, which routinely shuts down accounts for minor infractions of it's terms of use, hasn't touched this account, let alone shut it down.


A Twitter thread using the hashtag #killzimmerman has thousands of entries, most demanding Zimmerman's death.


The media, especially MSNBC are deathly silent.  They not only don't care, they are actively rooting for violence, especially Reverend Al Sharpton. 


And what I've written here is just the tip of the iceberg.  The coordinated effort to silence all who disagree with them is massive, well funded and frightening. More on that in a future post.