If you enter Alina Fitzpatrick's name on Google you'll find 17 or 18 references to her in the first couple of pages. If you search Bing you'll come across a little over 20. None of them are very recent. The news stories from various Oklahoma City media outlets are especially dated. They stopped sometime around the first couple of months of 2012.
Reports indicate that she attended Putnam City North High School through May of 2011. That autumn she began taking classes on line via the Putnam City Virtual High School. The reason she dropped out of North is still a little murky, at least publicly. It was reported she was being bullied, although a school district spokesperson was quick to say that there was no record of that.
The facts concerning her disappearance and death remain unchanged. She was dropped off at an apartment complex near NW 24th and Western on the evening of November 4th, 2011. Almost immediately after she was last seen her cell phone started routing calls directly to her voice mail. Apparently she never made it inside the apartment she was going to. On November 9th her body was found at 4506 Overbrook Rd. That is out by Anderson Road which is in far eastern Oklahoma County and not even remotely near the spot she was dropped off at. She was found nude, with trauma to the head, scrapes and bruises that appeared to be recent, and either paper or cloth in her mouth, as if she'd been gagged. The Medical Examiner decided that none of her obvious injuries were fatal, but that she had a significant amount of methamphetamine in her system, enough in fact to cause her death. With that bit of information in hand the Oklahoma City Police Department ruled that her death was not a homicide, but rather, suspicious. At that moment you could almost hear her case file being pushed to the bottom of the pile on some one's desk.
In the days before she went missing she had told family and friends that she was worried about an unnamed man who, somehow, may have glommed onto her cell phone number. It was reported she'd changed that number shortly before the tragedy that befell her.
According to her obituary she was buried on November 22nd, 2011 in a casket that was handmade and blessed by Trappist monks at an abbey in Iowa. When she was laid to rest she had spent only 17 years on the planet.
The status of the investigation into her disappearance and death remain unclear. There have been no media updates. There have been no progress reports made available to the public by the police. When it comes to Alina Fitzpatrick the silence is deafening.
The true national tragedy at play here is that we grow numb to this sort of thing in the United States. It really is far too easy for most of us to forget someone like Alina Fitzpatrick. I mean lets face it, we've got crazed lunatics gunning down movie patrons, mall shoppers, and nearly two dozen first graders all in one fell swoop. Unless it is a daughter, son, spouse, relative, or close friend the death of one individual, one 17 year old over a year ago, while certainly terrible, is just another day in the life.
It shouldn't be that way. To lose one of us is tragic, to lose our humanity is unthinkably evil.
Hopefully someday we will regain that humanity so terribly missing right now. Hopefully we'll grow to demand that the Alina Fitzpatrick's of the country receive the justice due to them, no matter how long it takes, no matter what it takes. Hopefully someday we'll recognize that we are the less because she is gone and we are certainly the less because so few of us even remember that she is. She deserves that much at least. In the end, we all do.
sic vita est
1-8-13
No comments:
Post a Comment