Tragedy of Tay Murder Lingers

I want to protest the way in which The Times has handled the very tragic murder of Stuart Tay. Or perhaps the police have chosen to reveal too much of the circumstances surrounding this boy’s death, but what has happened is that an innocent victim has been made into a guilty victim.

An honor roll student who has been heaped with praise in life has become a criminal in death by the way you have reported his conjectured criminal intentions to rob a computer warehouse. Stuart Tay is not here to defend himself, but he has been “tried and convicted” nonetheless. Why must the media cause further grief to his family?

This is a very sensitive point to me and my family because my brother was brutally murdered in 1991 in Yuba County, and the local paper there reported numerous times that it was probably a “drug deal gone bad.” Yet, in all my research into the police records and the killer’s confession, there was never any mention of drugs playing a part in my brother’s death--other than the fact that the killer had been drinking and taking illegal drugs himself in the hours preceding the murder. But my brother could not clear his name, and neither can Stuart Tay.

Do we, as a society, want to make ourselves feel better by reasoning that somehow these victims “had it coming to them” by the fact that they have been accused of illegal behavior? That perhaps we don’t have to waste quite as much sympathy on someone who “brought it on themselves?”

We must bear in mind that the suspects will all have their day in court to defend themselves, but my brother and Stuart Tay will never have that chance. Think kindly of them, and do not hasten to label them “bad boys,” for we may never know all the circumstances behind these tragic murders. Let them remain innocent victims.

TERRI SARGEANT

Orange