Sunday, September 16, 2007

More crime in rural America

This story, first published with more detail in the New York Times on Wednesday, 12 September, tells of the kidnapping and torture of a woman in rural West Virginia. I assume that the NYT saw this as worthy of space because of the race angle: the victim is black and her six assailants are white. The earlier version of the story, no longer available on line, told in detail the background of intergenerational poverty and crime associated with two of the suspects, the mother and son Brewster, each of whom has served time for killing another.

Like the story I posted yesterday about vigilante justice in Tennessee, this one reports on a rural "good Samaritan" neighbor who assisted the victim.

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