The Washington Post has a feature this morning on David Lee Robinson, killed in a robbery in January 2012.
Write Post reporter Paul Duggan:
Victims who aren’t perceived as innocent tend to draw scant public notice or sympathy, and the shooting of David Robinson appalled the civic conscience only briefly, owing to the dismal particulars of the crime: He had died in a gunfight after being robbed of his new Nike sneakers.
“The circumstances are not only tragic, they are incredibly disquieting,” Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) said hours after the slaying as he appeared at a previously scheduled church vigil against violence.”A life for a pair of Nike tennis shoes? C’mon, ladies and gentlemen! It’s time for us to be able to end this tragic violence in our society.”There was a pistol on the pavement near David when the police found him bleeding and unconscious. He carried a gun routinely, for self-protection, he used to say.
“My best friend,” he called his piece.
It was how he lived. But he wanted a better way.
According to data from MPD in Homicide Watch DC’s 2012 Year in Review, robbery was the second most common motive in homicides that year, with 12 of the 92 homicides classified as robbery.
No arrests have been made in Robinson’s case.
