Yesterday, my son came home from high school and he did what he always does. The routine each day after school is for him and me to go through his day, recounting what he did in his classes. When he got to his Engineering class, he mentioned something odd in the instruction that his teacher gave in regard to how my son's class should interact via Internet (Skype) with students from another District 211 high school, Conant H.S., with whom they are collaborating on a major project. His class was told to be careful how they interacted with the Conant High School kids who were just returning to school after the weekend in which they learned that a senior Conant girl and her family had been brutally stabbed by the girl's older sister's boyfriend.
I've been out on the loop on local news and had missed the story but my son had printed out a couple of articles off the nets before leaving school yesterday and I read the story with great sadness. The sadness turn to anger however when I read that already the perpetrator's court-appointed lawyer was "spinning" his client's tale of woe--child welfare case messed up in the system.
Take a look at a snap of the man that stabbed an entire family. For one thing he's not a child, he's 20 y.o.--old enough to have made the choice not to stab an entire family because you were pissed at the world.
Does he look like he's really suffering or demented? (This is a mug shot from another crime of his.)
My younger son has construed a general notion of what would be his ideal of a justice system that works. He calls it the "iron fist" justice system though he doesn't have all the details worked out--much would have to change. Broadly speaking, we stop going all soft on violent offenders. Ultimately, garbage like the person who essentially killed a whole family would be tossed.
I'm also mad at the sister who had a kid with this guy, a convicted, violent sexual predictor. I know she'll feel bad that she is ultimately the reason why that man was anywhere near her family. I'm just really mad and I can't even blog openly about my feelings about how society makes excuses for the "D'Andre Howards" of the world. A thug is a thug and as such is a threat to society.
It's now up to the only physically unscathed member of this family besides older sis with the murderous bf, the guy in the photo, age 20 that sort of looks like Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters circa his Nirvana era. He was at a good university, editor of the college paper, finishing out his junior year when he was informed on his family's demise. Now he gets to cope with this and hope his mom pulls through all right. Otherwise, he's left only with his dumbass sister who brought the documented convicted felon into her bed, ultimately sending their dad, little sister, and grandmother to their graves.
I'm really angry. And sad.
From the Chicago Sun-Times
Before going to the Hoffman Estates home where he allegedly stabbed
three people to death, 20-year-old D’Andre Howard went to the suburb’s
police station, authorities said Monday.
Howard was arrested early Friday on a traffic warrant by Hoffman
Estates police, but was released from custody barely an hour later
after posting bail, police said....
The Engelhardt family: Father, Alan, and his wife, Shelly, Laura
(center), Amanda (left) and Jeff Englehardt. D’Andre Howard is charged
with stabbing and slashing three members of
girlfriend Amanda's family.
(Courtesy ABC7 Chicago)
Howard is charged with murdering his girlfriend’s younger sister,
18-year-old Laura Engelhardt; her father, 57-year-old Alan Engelhardt;
and her grandmother, 73-year-old Marlene Gacek.
Howard — the father of the couple’s 8-month-old daughter — also is
charged with critically wounding 52-year-old Shelly Engelhardt, his
girlfriend’s mother.
Neither his girlfriend nor daughter was harmed, authorities said.
Howard and Amanda Engelhardt had quarreled earlier that night at their
Hoffman Estates apartment, but Engelhardt had taken their daughter and
gone to her parents’ nearby home, authorities have said
From the Chicago Tribune
At Hoffman Estates' Conant High School, senior Laura Engelhardt
would lean against a locker in the morning, ready to make her friends
laugh.
There was a lot to be happy about. Engelhardt was an A student who
had just chosen a college. She enjoyed a close bond with her father.
And in recent days, she began dating a boy on whom she had long
harbored a crush.
When school began Friday, though, she wasn't at her locker.
"I just thought, 'Oh, you get a boyfriend and forget about your friends,' and laughed about it," said her friend Jenny Earl, 17.
Engelhardt, her father and grandmother were stabbed to death Friday
in the family home in Hoffman Estates, authorities said. D'Andre
Howard, 20, a man who had a relationship with Engelhardt's older
sister, has been charged with their slayings.
