Evil in the world is pervasive but have a common connection in its disturbed matrix which could represent dissolution in perceived promises, insecurities in one’s station in life, misinterpretations, intrusions and twisted truths, an immature judgmental mindset and subsequent reactions to baseless assumptions or notions, a shrinking of a strong moral fabric and basic human selfishness.
These articles from The Independent and The Philadelphia Inquirer show a perverse need for violence without seemingly to find a real motive behind these despicable acts regardless of their location. Is evil just a psychological frame of mind or through pure conjecture can it be labeled and dismissed? What has to be done is a relentless investigation into the foundation of the individual and from that the individual offender.
Random acts of evil, though arbitrary, must be examined and confronted in order to locate the seed of criminal conduct.
- The Independent: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article18272.ece
Author: Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. and Linda K. Harris INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS Date: July 17, 2004Section: LOCALPage: A01
- A Columbia law student interning in the District Attorney's Office who survived a stunning knife attack in broad daylight left the hospital yesterday, as city officials reassured the public.
While community leaders and police officials expressed regret over Thursday's attack, they said Center City should be considered a safe place in general.The summer intern, Joshua K. Harman, 25, of Frazer, Chester County, said he was thankful to be alive yesterday afternoon as he was released from the hospital.
"I've never been stabbed before, and it was a lot of blood," Harman said.
"I wasn't used to seeing that much blood," the law student added as he faced a throng of reporters from his wheelchair outside Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
Philadelphia Police Inspector William Colarulo said the four high-profile crimes seen this year in Center City are essentially aberrations.
In February, an 8-year-old girl was beaten and sexually assaulted in a public library near Seventh and Market Streets. In mid-April, a 22-year-old South Philadelphia man was shot and killed in mid-afternoon while driving near 17th and Pine Streets. And earlier this week, a Kensington man was arrested on charges of planting an explosive device outside City Hall last week. Colarulo emphasized the swift police response to Thursday's stabbing.
"Even though it was unfortunate what happened, there were officers on the scene immediately and prevented this incident from escalating further," he said. "The area is safe. I read the crime reports every day. I don't see any area in Center City that is of major concern. We don't have any discernible patterns that people need to be looking at."
Police said Harman and Assistant District Attorney Vicki Markovitz, of the Major Trials unit, had just left the District Attorney's Office at 1421 Arch St. Thursday when a man described as homeless made "a thrusting motion" toward Harman.
The man initially told police he was Kareem Abdul, but fingerprints identified him as Larry Kelly, 51, whose last known address was on North Stillman Street in North Philadelphia.
Kelly stabbed Harman once in the left side without provocation, police said.
An investigator with the Special Victims unit, Detective James Owens, witnessed the attack and intervened. "He pulled out his weapon, told the male to drop his knife three times. The male came toward him with the knife. He fired one time," said Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson, addressing reporters just after the attack.
At the hospital yesterday, Harman, who was dressed in khakis, dark golf shirt and sneakers, declined to discuss the attack. But he talked about his injuries.
"To be honest, I didn't really feel the stab wound and it didn't really start hurting until they started treating it," he said. He was effusive in his praise for the hospital staff and a court warrant officer, Sgt. Larry Aliberti, who rode in the police car with him, compressing his wound.
"He was keeping me talking. Keeping me alert. Just keeping compression on my wound," said Harman, a first-year law student at Columbia University.
His mentor, Markovitz, who was uninjured, jumped into the police car for the emergency ride. She also spoke highly of Aliberti's actions.
"I was in the car in the front seat and the warrant officer, who was amazing, kept talking up and kept telling me to talk to him [Harman], to keep him lucid and awake.
"And so we were telling stories," she said. It was Harman's first day back from a vacation, "and I was saying that, 'I bet you wish that you had taken an extra day vacation,' " Markovitz said.
Michael Weinstein, the trauma surgeon who operated on Harman, called the injury "a very significant stab wound." He said it penetrated at a spot between the chest and abdominal cavities.
"Certainly, a knife in that location and in the right direction could easily stab the heart and cause quite a much more severe injury than he had," Weinstein said.
Harman was accompanied out the hospital's door by his mother, Marlene Keesler, 52, his sister Gabrielle, 20, Markovitz, and Weinstein.
On Thursday, Kelly, the alleged attacker, was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital where he underwent surgery for his gunshot wound. Police said he was not cooperating with investigators.
According to criminal records, Kelly has two convictions. He received five years' probation in 1988 for illegal possession of a firearm. In 1993, he was given 11 to 23 months in jail after pleading guilty to aggravated assault and weapons offenses.
Kelly will be charged with attempted murder, aggravated and simple assault, possession of an instrument of crime, and recklessly endangering another person, police said.
City leaders said the stabbing was an isolated incident in a city that has seen a dramatic drop in crime in the last few years.
"Any serious or violent crime is one too many," said Paul R. Levy, executive director of the Center City District. "But if we step back and look at the broader context, from 2000 to 2003, within the Center City District, serious crimes declined by 16 percent."
Levy also said that in the first half of this year, , serious crime had fallen an additional 3 percent, compared with the first half of 2003, according to statistics gathered by the Center City District.
"Obviously any recent crimes are very disturbing because they unsettle us about the substantial progress we've made. Important to our progress is continued vigilance and no reduction in police downtown," Levy said.
The Center City District spans most of the commercial area of downtown where restaurants and retail stores are most frequented by visitors. The District Attorney's Office is just outside those boundaries.
City Councilman Darrell L. Clarke, whose Fifth District includes the area where the stabbing occurred, said he believed the city was basically safe.
"When you have these dramatic reductions, at some point you're going to have a crime somewhere," Clarke said.
Clarke cited a nearly three-year-old community court as a great aid in combating quality-of-life crimes. The court, at 1401 Arch St. near the District Attorney's Office, was set up to quickly address crimes in and near Center City.
So far in the business district, people have remained somewhat sanguine about the attack's implications for safety, said Benjamin Frank, executive director of the Center City Proprietors Association.
"If you have a business in the city, you have everything at stake, and if the city has a bad rep, you start worrying, what are the customers going to think," Frank said. "Apparently, no one has expressed any concern," he said.
The fact that the suspect is a homeless man highlights the continuing battle the city has waged against people living on the streets, many of whom are drug addicts and/or mentally ill.
In the 1990s, more than 500 people were living on the streets of Center City.
That number has been drastically reduced, though it fluctuates according to the season, with more people venturing out to sidewalks in the summer.
Last year, the Center City District moved 128 people off the streets and into shelters.
"We've made progress," Levy said. "Everyone is very focused on this, but we can't rest on this either."
Harman, who wants to become a prosecutor, managed to joke during a news conference held as he was being released from the hospital.
Referring to his internship, he said, "I think I could have lived without this portion." He smiled, revealing a mouthful of braces.
The injury, said Harman, won't keep him from work long. "I hope to be back working early next week or as soon as I'm physically able to," he said.
Before they wheeled Harman off for the ride home, his mother told a funny story about her son's passion for the law.
"When he was five, he dressed as a lawyer for Halloween," she said. "So you know he's always known he wants to be in this position."
