Don't Cry For Shenandoah Pennsylvania

three murderers acquitted by friendly juries?

One year ago this past weekend Luis Ramirez was mugged to death by drunken cowardly teens who were then urged by a local corrupt cop who was having sex with one of the thug's mother to get their stories straight. One year ago today, Ramirez died. Shenandoah has since been cast as the small racist town nestled in the Pennsylvania Appalachians. Many townspeople are upset with that designation.

But is it deserving? Certainly there are many good people in Shenandoah who are not racist and are appalled by the obstructed justice brewed by the local cops that helped bring injustice to the death of Ramirez. But there are many others who blindly call the death of Ramirez "a street fight gone astray" as if there is such a thing as a six against one fight that could go astray. It was astray to begin with.

It was six against one. It was not a fight. It was a deadly beating!

The haters of undocumented immigrants in the Shenandoah area are proud of their hate and ignorance, like when the ultra-ignorant Debra Rabold of Effort, Pa spewed that if Ramirez was not here he would not be dead. Ironically, the woman failed to mention that her own son was serving a prison term for trying to kill his sister-in-law while she slept in her bed.

Her son is also autistic.

Maybe if Mr. Rabold had not had sex with his ignorant wife, then they would not have produced a convict? Just trying to follow her logic.

On a side note, I agree that Rabold's autistic son does not belong in prison, not because of his innocence of a crime he was convicted of, but because prisons are not equipped to deal with autistic adults. It is cruel and inhumane to keep him in a general population inside a prison.

Empathy. A quality some people from Shenandoah should try some time.

According to a story in a recent edition of the on-line republicanherald.com local residents are fed up with the negative coverage.

"They (Piekarsky and Donchak) had their time in court and now it's over," said Joyce, 42, who also would not give her last name. "People don't want to hear about this anymore."

I wonder if she felt the same way about the O.J. verdict? I wonder if a year after the O.J. verdict if she was advocating for all to forget about it since Simpson had his day in court and that, in her opinion, people did not want to hear about it anymore?

People do want to hear about it. They want to hear that the Department of Justice is going to file federal charges against the local cowardly thugs named Donchak and Piekarsky and against the local corrupt cops who obstructed justice on that fatal evening.

Many want to hear that the life of a human being is worth more than just a few months in a local slammer. These cowards are not even going to do hard time for savagely beating a man to death.

"It's wrong what happened to him (Ramirez), but it's getting old now," Lisa Martinez, 39, said last week.

"There's just so much of it," Jarett Weikel, 21, said while walking the streets of Shenandoah last week.

"The less media attention this gets, the better," Monsignor Bernard A. Flanagan, pastor of Annunciation Church, 218 W. Cherry St., said last week. "It's causing more problems for us. Shenandoah is never mentioned at all without something bad being attached to it. Shenandoah is getting a bad name, and it's all false."

Lisa, it is getting old? So there is a magical date when one can just forget about injustice?

Jarret Weikel thinks that there is too much of it. The reality is that this story has not received much play in the major media outlets.

It is all false? All of it? Really monsignor? Get real Flanagan. So you want us to believe that there is not one racist in the entire town? Where in the hell did the 6 thugs learn their racism? Did they get it from a can of beer? No, they learned it at home and from their good old boy buddies. They learned it in Shenandoah.

There are good people in Shenandoah. There are also racists in Shenandoah. But as long as there are people like Flanagan, who are going to be in denial of that fact, the disease that resulted in a fatal mugging on their streets is going to continue to infect their town.

You do not fight hate with denial, not even if you are a man of the cloth.