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Jewish World Review
August 23, 2010
/ 13 Elul, 5770
They're Just Killing People Up Here
By
Mitch Albom
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Rodney Martin saw Darryle Miller just last month. They were standing in the parking lot of St. Cecilia's gym, the college coach and his former player, talking about life, sports, about Darryle's baby daughter. Darryle flipped open his phone to show off the latest photos.
"Then, right before he left," Martin recalled, "he turned and said, 'Coach, you gotta help me get out of this place. They're just killing people up here.' "
Three weeks later, Darryle was dead.
They're just killing people up here. Darryle left a Detroit club last Sunday morning, after a birthday party for a friend. Someone stopped him. Someone apparently wanted his sunglasses. Someone shot him in the back and took them.
The case is under investigation. But you know the story. A confrontation. A bullet. Another young man dies. Another baby grows up without a father. That's the story. A familiar story. A Detroit story. Too familiar.
Darryle Miller, 20, was a basketball star at Northwestern High, a 6-foot-6 swing player who did a lot by doing a little of everything, shoot, defend, rebound, block. "I watched him play three games in one Saturday during summer league," Martin recalled, "that night, we offered him a scholarship."
Darryle joined Martin at Tiffin University in northern Ohio, a small NCAA Division II school on a nice campus by the Sandusky River. By many Detroit standards, he was a success story. He made it out.
But Martin left Tiffin in 2009 and Darryle, a loyal kid, said if his coach left, he was leaving, too. Martin hooked on with Bethune-Cookman University in Florida. He was trying to get Darryle a spot there or someplace else.
Then, last Sunday, Martin's phone rang.
Too late.
A MOTHER WEEPS
Much has been made over the sunglasses Darryle wore. Supposedly they were high-end Cartier shades, a hot item on the streets, rumored to cost as much as $2,400.
Maybe they cost that much. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they were knockoffs. Whatever. In the aftermath, some people have angrily questioned what a young adult like that was doing with sunglasses like those.
Wearing them, that's what. He didn't steal them. He paid for them. And while it might be a silly or irresponsible expenditure of money, if you think that earns him a bullet in the back, there is something perverse in your calculations.
The problem isn't Darryle Miller, the problem is the guy who shot him. The problem is the trigger and the bullet, not what sat on Miller's nose. If we have become so accepting of random murder that our philosophy is "don't go out with nice things" we have accepted that our city is a killing field and you are not there to live in it, only to survive it.
"I would never have thought in a million years that my son would be gone for sunglasses that he paid for," Rose Ford, Darryle's mother, said, choking back her emotion. "I don't know what they cost ... but whatever they cost, my son worked, he took care of his daughter, he went to school to reach his goal. ... And this person robbed him of his life. It's not fair."
Things haven't been fair here in a long time.
A PLAGUE ON THE CITY
Murder for accessories is nothing new. Years ago it was for certain Air Jordan shoes. Or Max Julien jackets. Or Cazal glasses. There is always some "gotta have" item, and none of them is worth dying over. But before you mock the victim, ask yourself how fast you bought an iPhone, or the newest model car. Most American consumers operate under the same impulses: You see. You want. You buy. Darryle Miller did, too. But on our streets, sadly, the system is different. You see. You want. You take.
According to his mother, Darryle was working as a HIV counselor and earning money to support his daughter. Many young men, former teammates, some who only knew him a short while, were expected at his funeral. Martin, his college coach, used to predict that Darryle would one day come back to Detroit, after graduating, and "open a store or something, find some way to give back."
There will be no giving back now. Darryle Miller took the worst our city dishes out, a bullet in the back, and he's not getting up. Police are trying to solve the case. Meanwhile the door closes a little more, people hide inside a little more, people stay away a little more. They're just killing people up here. Who knew the latest lost son of the city would sum it up so well before he left?
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© 2009, THE DETROIT FREE PRESS
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