As someone once said many years ago, we Americans are Prisoners of Violence.
It is everywhere; horrifically real in tragic wars around the world and just as factual in the senseless daily violent acts that we Americans perpetrate on one another. And lest we forget the in the captivating, yet explosively realistic manufactured orgiastic violence in Hollywood movies, television shows, and video “games”.
It is everywhere. And shamefully inescapable.
This is a requiem for two young men who recently died way before their time: Kermy and Boy Summa.
When a cop kills an unarmed young person, the justifiable outrage roars around the world. When a young man is killed by another young man on the streets of the urban jungles, it seems only the family and friends mourn.
This is a sad lament for two young men of color, who were killed on the same Sunday. One in a big city, New York, the other in a small one, Jersey City.
Aspiring rapper Francisco Mercedez (29, pictured right) was shot in New York along with his manager, Kenny Jimenez in a drive-by shooting outside a deli in Hamilton Heights. The shooting happened about 3 A.M. Mercedez, whose rapper name was Boy Summa Benz, had supposedly just been at a release party for an album in Connecticut before he had come back to New York. A friend stated that Mercedez’ rap lyrics were all considered to be positive and that Jimenez was his manager. The two of them were working hard to get out of the neighborhood and do it the good way.
In Jersey City:
22-year-old Kermy Amparo-Berroa (pictured left) was pronounced dead shortly after 5 a.m. after he was stabbed outside a birthday party on Manhattan Avenue, in Jersey City Heights. Just before 4 a.m. Sunday morning, Jersey City Police were dispatched to a report of a stabbing in the area of 48 Manhattan Ave. When officers arrived they found emergency medical services treating Amparo-Berroa for life-threating stab wounds to his upper body. Amparo-Berroa was transported to the Jersey City Medical Center, where he later died.
One young man may have been targeted and the other seems to have randomly crossed paths with a drunk group of thugs looking for a fight. The persons who killed these young men also destroyed their mothers and fathers and family. They will live on, but they will be dead inside; suffering a wound that can never, ever be healed.
Below is a candlelight vigil for Kermy Amparo-Berroa near his home in North Bergen. Eventually, the flames will burn out, just like the lives of all the children who have died violently in America.
