The Sum of all Fears

Following on from some of my thoughts yesterday, what could be worse than losing a young child?

I may be thoughtless here but I heard on the radio today that the little girl that was caught in the cross fire of a London shooting a few weeks ago is said to be recovering but it is now confirmed that the bullet paralysed her and she will never walk again.

Hearing that moved me to tears as I drove the car. I can't think of anything worse than a child being maimed at such a young age and having to face the rest of their life in a wheelchair. The child's name is Thusha Kamaleswaran and she was shot in the chest in a shop in Stockwell in March.

In another radio snippet, there was a story about criminals and victims facing one another in order to get some kind of closure for the victim while the criminal can rightly feel remorse for the crime they committed. Admittedly this was related to burglary but the aim was to justify not sending the criminal to jail as most burglaries are committed by young people and therefore they might shape up without having to go to prison and mix with hardened criminals.

In principal, I don't disagree with the latter. But of the six people so far arrested for the attempted murder of Thusha, only one is not a teenager, and he's just 20. The rest are 17-19 and there is one suspect aged 14.

I am not sure of my point here. But if I were the parent of little Thusha I am sure that forgiving would be far from my mind and I tend to forgive most things easily.

There is an argument, however, for terrorists and murderers to have to confront the enormity of their actions. Bin Laden will never have to face up to that and in the minds of his followers he's up there with his gaggle of virgins right now, whooping it up. That's a victory to him and his cause. If only he could have stood and faced the loved ones of those who died in 9/11 and allowed them the opportunity to stare him in the eye or ask him where in all the Koran does it say that you murder innocent people to perform Jihad? Perhaps it would have given some semblance of closure but maybe, just maybe, Bin Laden himself might have seen how totally absurd his actions were.

I digress. The fact is that for no good reason, a small child aged just 5 has to now face the prospect of living all her life at the most extreme disadvantage.

I cannot even start to contemplate how I would feel if this little girl were my daughter. But I know how I feel about the people who shot her.


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