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Violence doesn’t make sense.
It’s inherently illogical anyway. And when it spikes it does so quickly and often dies down just as fast.
It’s difficult to say why. The underlying factors that fuel it – greed, mental illness, drugs and alcohol – keep on trucking no matter what the murder rate is.
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A look at Evansville’s homicide stats over the years will tell you that. In 1991, we saw 12 murders. We didn’t hit double digits again until 2003, when 12 people were killed again. The year after that, we reported zero.
So it’s tough to know what to make of the terrible run of mayhem currently gripping Evansville.
On Saturday, police were called to the scene of a fatal shooting near Green River Road and the Lloyd Expressway. Details were scant as of Saturday night, but it’ll likely mark the 10th homicide within city limits in the last 78 days.
Those killings have claimed victims of all ages, genders and races. There have been shootings, stabbings, car crashes and one dismemberment.
It’s a horrific, nonsensical, bloody run to end a horrific, nonsensical, bloody year.
2017 could be the most violent 365 days in Evansville’s history. We stood at 17 city homicides as of Saturday night, according to the Courier & Press’ count. Most of that doesn’t take into account a record number of drug overdoses investigated by the Vanderburgh County Coroner’s Office.
Nor does it count Ricky Ard, the 55-year-old man shot and killed by police after he charged an officer – baseball bat swinging above his head – in front of the federal building in late August.
Coroner Steve Lockyear determined Ard was suffering a schizophrenic episode. His death highlighted the urgent need for reform in a criminal justice system ill-equipped to handle the complex needs of the mentally ill.
The death of Sherry Loehrlein isn’t included either. She was killed outside city limits in a bizarre attack investigators blame on her husband, Clinton Loehrlein. According to arrest affidavits and eyewitness testimony, he shot and killed his wife in their Darmstadt house.
It didn’t stop there. He also shot and injured one of his twin daughters and stabbed the other. No one seems to know why.
The numbers do count, however, the sad ending to a mystery that plagued one family for almost a year.
Aleah Beckerle, the disabled, nonverbal 19-year-old stolen from her bedroom in July 2016, was found dead in a crumbling vacant house on the South Side. Family member Terrence Roach was charged in the killing after he reportedly confessed.
On March 27, the day Beckerle was found, it was hard to imagine another crime that heinous. But Evansville has matched it over and over in 2017.
There’s no way to know if things will improve in 2018. They could get even worse. There’s no way to predict this world’s random murderous whims.
But I’m glad 2017 is sucking in its final breaths. I sure won’t miss it.
Contact columnist Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com