A Horrible Story

At the end of March, a 12 year old girl went missing in Greeley.  It was weird and uncomfortable and very much a surprise.  Greeley has a huge crime per capita of "petty crimes;" breaking and entering, shooting out car windows, gang graffiti, breaking into cars...all that is very normal for Greeley..even shootings sometimes are normal.  But a missing person is not.  So when this girl went missing, it caused the whole city to jump into action and hang up homemade signs and get on their ATVs and drive around irrigation ditches and such.  And any where you go in Greeley, you see these signs. 

Well, just this week, her body was found.  It was found less than half a mile from her house, so horribly decomposed already that they had to rely on dental records to identify her. 

Her body was found in an irrigation ditch along the street I drive on every day to work.

Ever since this girl went missing, I have thought about her and her family.  I see pictures of missing children every time I go to Walmart and I don't think about them all the next week.  Maybe its the authentic publicity that has made me think of her more.  Maybe its that its "close to home."  Whatever it is, when they found the body, it was disturbing...and scary...and hard. 

I can't stop thinking about it.  I can't stop thinking about how observant I have been lately and I didn't even know that an irrigation ditch ran next to 35th Avenue.  I can't stop thinking that out there, probably still in Greeley, is this horribly twisted, sick individual that killed this little girl.  And I can't stop thinking about her, her story and her parents.

With most crimes and violence, I can almost immediately push it out of my head and detach, because it's not close, it's not relevant to me, it doesn't seem real.  This doesn't seem real.  My only connection with her is the street I drive on.  And yet, for whatever reason, I can't detach myself from this.