Hideous tragedy in a small town

The little town of Merritt in BC’s interior is, in my recall, basically a cow-town and a place on the way to somewhere else. The setting is pretty enough, with rolling hills and rangeland right at it’s doorstep. It's probably grown since I spent time there.

It’s in the dry zone so there’s lots of sagebrush, cactus, tumbleweed and big trucks hauling unfortunate cattle on their way to the abattoirs from the big ranches up the Nicola Valley. Big-big ranches, like Douglas Lake, once a rival to the Gang Ranch in commodiousness, and formerly owned by ‘Chunky’ Woodward, bossman of late-lamented Woodward Stores in BC and Alberta.

I spent a fair amount of time in Merritt as a kid. My uncle and his clinical partner, best buddies and fresh from med-school had set up practice there as the town doctors. This uncle was my mother’s kid-brother and she liked the company of him and his pretty young wife. So, we would go to Merritt on a fairly regular basis for a couple of years.

For a kid from Vancouver, Merritt was sheer heaven. It looked like a cowboy movie set, and there was good fishing in the Nicola River. When things got boring we could go up to the city dump just outside of town and take pot-shots at rats with 22s. I don’t recall ever actually hitting one. They would sit on the piles of garbage and sneer at the non-crackshot city slicker kids.

But, this isn’t a travelogue in intent. Last weekend something quite awful happened in sleepy little Merritt. It was one of those traumatic events that small towns never really get over. One thoroughly fucked-up guy took it upon himself to murder his three children, ages 10, 8 and 5. What can you say? It was one of those hideous ‘Susan Smith’ (the one who drowned her kids in South Carolina a number of years ago) kinds of things. I have no idea what would go through the mind of somebody who would perpetrate such a hideous act.

The first thing that invariably comes to my mind is: “Why didn’t you just kill yourself and leave the kids alone, you hideous sonofabitch? Do the world a favor and rid the planet of ‘you’.” I have no children. I wish I did. I love kids. And in that I cannot even begin to go there in terms of thinking of the terror of those tykes immediately before. Truly, my visceral response is that for some people hanging is much too benevolent.

But, there is more to it than that. And this is the part that distresses me almost as much as the slaying of the children, and that is the system. In the first place, the suspect, one Allan Dwayne Schoenborn is still on the lam. My fondest hope is that he does the world a favor and ‘offs’ himself. Suicide-by-cop is another agreeable option.
Distressing, however, is the fact that the previous week the bastard was arrested three times, for drunkenness, ranting and raving, causing a ruckus at the kids’ school, uttering threats and so forth. The cops attested he should be held, as he was dangerous. The local courts disagreed and released him on ‘his own recognizance’ Huh? How is a person like this, obviously mentally ill and severely alcoholic able to monitor his own behavior? No, said some judge of some sort, he hasn’t done anything to warrant holding him. I hope that same judge is having some mighty sleepless nights these days. Big gaffe. They guy had a history. He’d had multiple arrests in Vancouver, whence he lived prior to going to Merritt a few months earlier. He had a ‘history’. Somehow, that ‘history’, in an age of instantaneous electronic connectedness did not make it into the hands of this judicial person who made the decision to open the cell door.

Speaking of sleepless nights, the mother, who had had a restraining order against Schoeborn, got the thing lifted. Another huh? Not only that, she stepped out for a few moments on an “errand” on the day in question, and left the kids in the care of their father. Bad judgment calls both. I don’t mean to malign the mother who will be going through the agonies of hell, but I cannot help but wondering what goes through people’s minds at times.

My only final comment is that the judicial system is not just designed to protect the ‘rights’ of bad people, but also to protect the rights of the innocent. The system failed woefully in this case.