A young life lost: One of many sad stories of victims of crimes

The reason to feel sad about the death of University of North Carolina student body president Eve Marie Carson is not just that so promising a young life was ended much too soon.

It also is not that she was pretty or popular, or even that she was a student leader.

What makes this murder tragic is that it was so senseless — and that police are considering the fact that it could have happened to anyone.

On any given day, there are hundreds of young men and women like Miss Carson who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no explanation for their deaths other than a random crime and a sick, callous individual with no regard for innocent human life. The acts are so senseless and so random that they are even harder to process — hard to get over.

One moment a young woman has a bright future ahead of her — and the next moment she is gone.

A campus is mourning today because of a tremendous loss of a student leader, friend and spirit whose life had already touched so many.

Her attacker might not even have known who she was. That is what makes random crimes like these so horrible. The only motive usually is greed.

And had this been another victim, another student, one of her peers, this young woman would have cried, too, at a life lost much too young — and reminded her fellow students of the need to care about each other, to be there for each other.

Honoring her memory requires UNC students to cherish the lives they will get to lead that she will never know — and to think about her family as they struggle to make sense out of so tremendous a loss.

And we should grieve, too, not just for this young woman, but for all those over the last year who have been taken too soon — losses that did not have to happen.

Published in Editorials on March 7, 2008 11:56 AM