Some crimes, like the wounding of 16-year-old black youth Ralph Yarl by elderly white man Andrew Lester in Kansas City, MO, are National News. Other crimes, like the intentional vehicular murder by 16-year-old black youth Israel Muyaya Madimba of 70-year-old white man Norbert Olmscheid in St. Cloud, MN, are local news.
For example, from local news station KSTP.com:
Charges: Teen ‘decided’ to run over, kill pedestrian in St. Cloud
Kyle Brown KSTP
April 24, 2023 – 2:43 PMA teenager accused of intentionally running over and killing a pedestrian last week in St. Cloud is now facing murder charges.
Authorities say 70-year-old Norbert John Olmscheid was walking on the sidewalk Friday near the 1700 block of Sixth Avenue North when the teen suspect allegedly drove onto the path in a stolen vehicle and hit him from behind.
According to a criminal complaint filed Monday in Stearns County, the alleged driver, 16-year-old Israel Muyaya Madimba, will stand trial as an adult on charges of first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree intentional murder. He faces life in prison without parole if convicted on the first-degree murder charge.
Prosecutors say Madimba admitted to stealing the vehicle from the St. Cloud YMCA after finding the key in a locker. In a post-arrest statement, the defendant said he saw Olmscheid walking on the sidewalk and “decided to run him over.”
The complaint goes on to say Madimba trailed the victim slowly at first before accelerating the vehicle. He told investigators he was listening to a song about murder.
How can you tell which is which?
You just have to have an instinct for this sort of thing.
By the way, I have a vague memory of reading in Harper’s four decades ago that frigid St. Cloud had the lowest crime rate in the country.
But that doesn’t mean that the workers at local news outlets don’t want to move up to the national news stage. Hence from local news station KARE11:
Despite the crime’s serious nature, the U.S. Department of Justice reports the number of youth arrests for violent crime has declined 67% since 2006.
Author: Jennifer Hoff (KARE 11)
Published: 9:19 PM CDT April 25, 2023ST. CLOUD, Minn. — In St. Cloud, there’s now a new memorial where police say a teenage driver intentionally hit and killed a 70-year-old man in a stolen car.
… Although the nature of the crime is serious, experts say crimes like this committed by youth are down significantly.
“The youth crime rate peaked in about 1995 to 1996 and has dropped about 80% ever since,” said Director of Youth Justice at the Sentencing Project Josh Rovner. The Sentencing Project is a research and advocacy group in Washington, D.C.
“Over the long term, there’s no doubt we’re seeing a lot fewer kids — and adults for that matter — arrested, but youth crime rates have dropped faster than for any other demographic,” said Rovner.
Rovner’s data is in line with the U.S. Department of Justice which shows more than 424,000 people under 18 were arrested in 2020 (the most recent year for which data are available). That’s 38% fewer than the year before and less than one in 10 were for a violent crime.
… “That’s why we need to rely on the data to see what things look like long term,” said Rovner. “None of that negates the fact that these awful stories are part of our lives and stick with us.”
