Another Senseless Tragedy To Start The New Year

Darrent Wiliams-what a fucked up story to start the New Year.

The Denver Broncos cornerback was shot to death while parked in a snow bank outside a Denver area nightclub early this morning, just hours after the Broncos were defeated in overtime by the San Francisco 49'ers, resulting in their elimination from this years NFL playoffs.

At least two other people, a man and a woman, who have not yet been identified, were also shot and were taken to a Denver hospital.

No one knows as yet who the shooters are or what was the motive, but evidently a vehicle pulled up to the parked automobile which carried Williams and his fellow passengers, and sprayed it with a hail of bullets.

Williams had been a second round draft choice from out of Oklahoma last year, and from the start of his career with the Broncos made an immediate impact. He sufferred a minor shoulder injury in last nights game which necessitated his leaving the game early, after which he reported he would be considering surgery.

Williams had been a troubled youth in his high school years,and was reported to have a propensity to hang out with "the wrong crowd", but upon beginning his college football career, seemed to have turned his life around.

He was reportedly interested in doing charity work aimed at convincing young people to stay away from gangs, and the gang lifestyle. It would be all too easy to speculate that this lead to his murder, but no one knows yet just what the reason was for this senseless tragedy. For that matter, no one can really say that Williams was the actual intended taret, or whether this might have been a case of mistaken identity, or just a bunch of thugs that decided to get their jollies out of killing some people.

When I heard that the Denver area was experiencing a snowstorn at the onset of Yule, I felt that this was significant, a kind of omen, if you will, of some important development that would be centered in the Denver area, yet something that would be of at least some importance extending beyond that immediate area.

I won't go so far yet as to say this news is the fulfillment of that omen. Yet, the fact that Williams had been involved in gangs, and his promising life was ended possibly as a result of something connected to gang activites, certainly gives me some pause, even if this did not directly involve him outside of this tragedy.

Gang activities in the country has been on the back burner pretty much over the last two or three years, with the nations attention focused so intently on the war in Iraq, and the "War On Terror", and other issues that have pushed it into the background.

Yet, this could be the year where it establishes a kind of prominence of national attention, especially given the ever growing influence of illegal criminal immigrant gangs from Mexico and South and Central America.

Whether this turns out to be the case or not, this is certainly a devastating blow to the city of Denver, and to the Broncos team, and to the NFL in general, and speaks volumes about the violence that exists in our society, and the world, always simmerring just below the surface, until it erupts, like it always does from time to time, resulting in pain, sufferring, and deaths that all too often we never hear of, due to the relative obcurity of the victims and the perpetrators involved.

Here's hoping that the New Year will see a resolution to deal with these problems in truly positive ways, as oppossed to the knee jerk reactions they most always inevitably elicit,and which usually-and rightfully-get nowhere, lasting just until the inital tragedies inevitably fade from the general publics immediate memory, save for those families and friends who are forever left bereaved.