New York Neighborhood Unified by Actions of Good Samaritan
”Police refuse to identify the assailant, because the case is still active, but are calling him “Jonathan Roswell from Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
BROOKLYN – Evonne Parkins walks through the same small park in Williamsburg every night. With her distinctive tattoos and piercings many of the people who know her call “tribal,” she is a fixture in the neighborhood, greeted in all of the local coffee shops and in the record store and clothing boutique she owns with a friend. But last Thursday, her evening walk was interrupted by a figure with a long criminal past, and less than honorable motives.
“As I was walking through the park,” said Parkins two weeks after the attack, “A very strange person emerged from the swing set and demanded I give him my messenger bag and the wallet that was attached to the back pocket of my skinny jeans by a small chain.”“I thought he was being ironic, or that it was some sort of performance piece, but from his appearance I couldn’t tell if he was upper middle class, and I began to get scared.”“I wanted to run,” said Parkins, “but I could only stand there and mutter to myself, ‘Snoop, where’s Chris? Snoop where’s Chris? In case of trapped animal...’”Police refuse to identify the assailant, because the case is still active, but are calling him “Jonathan Roswell from Santa Fe, New Mexico.”“Mr. Roswell from Santa Fe New Mexico was recently released from a correctional facility in upstate New York,” said the desk sergeant on duty at the time of this report. “He’s a repeat offender, with a long criminal record of things like robbery, assault. A very unsavory individual.”Roswell from Santa Fe had begun his life of crime soon after graduating from the Wharton School. But on this night, fate interceded, in an act that would change two lives.Mariano Broxton responded to Parkins’ pleas of “Is this real? Is this real? Should I call for help?” with immediate action, entering the park and demanding that Roswell from Santa Fe tell him what was going on.“I am not an imposing person, but I try and stand up for what’s right. Clearly Mr. Roswell from Santa Fe was threatening Ms. Parkins in a way she could not understand, so I stepped in and helped.”When confronted by Broxton, RfSFNM fled the scene, but left behind him some DNA, in the form of excrement. He was apprehended sometime later as he tried to enter Connecticut.“Someone like that, they aren’t used to people actually resisting,” said Broxton. “So he shat himself and ran. It was quite smelly actually. I think he had been eating something savory.“I don’t think of myself as a hero.”And neither do the members of the neighborhood. Mr. Broxton has faced a backlash for his actions, resulting in the loss of his job, the loss of most of his social circle, and a host of legal troubles that have cost him his entire savings.“What he did was unconscionable,” said Ted Leo, Parkins’ current boyfriend of three months. “Her sense of agency has been totally undermined. She has been emotionally a wreck. She still hasn’t recovered.”“It’s true,” said Parkins, I haven’t been able to stop talking about the attack since that day. I ask everyone I know, ‘Did you hear what happened to me? It was on the news, NPR, the Times, you won’t believe it.’ I have that conversation at least eight times a day. I am forced to constantly relive it every interaction I have with everybody, although sometimes, because of the trauma, I end up playing it for laughs.”“This hasn’t stopped for two weeks,” she said.Peter Rimes, a resident of Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, described what has been the common response to the incident. “It’s shaken the fabric of our community here. For someone to take matters into their own hands, and risk their personal safety to save another person, that’s not what we are about. I mean, what if everyone took actions like the ones Broxton took? He has put us all in danger.”“And, by not allowing Evonne to act on her own behalf, Mr. Broxton has perpetuated the cycle of female victimhood that both she and I have been working together for so long to escape,” said Leo. “He’s undone years of our work in literature classes.”The outcry has cost Broxton his job as a legal aid. His actions have even gotten the attention of lawmakers in Albany, who have proposed that a special Evonne’s Law be passed to protect others.“I just thought I was helping. How could I know what would happen?” said Broxton.Dr. Extraño, a doctor working out of an office in Brooklyn and an expert on criminal behavior, said that Broxton is in dire need of evaluation. “These erratic actions undermine our social bonds. They erode the confidence we all need to navigate our social world effectively.”“I only hope Mr. Broxton can get the help he needs,” said Extraño. “My rates are very reasonable.”# # #
Tragedy Touches Miami Beach Youth
Two days ago, Tommy Kramer, a resident of Miami Beach, was found dead, the victim of an apparent suicide. Police responded to an emergency 911 call Sunday morning. Kramer’s body was found by his mother. Based on a note the 16-year-old left on his nightstand, his suicide was the product of a life that even at his young age, had become “too frustrating to bear,” which drove him to “take [his] life with his own hands.”
published April 27, 2010
MIAMI – Two days ago, Tommy Kramer, a resident of Miami Beach, was found dead, the victim of an apparent suicide. Police responded to an emergency 911 call Sunday morning. Kramer’s body was found by his mother. Based on a note the 16-year-old left on his nightstand, his suicide was the product of a life that even at his young age, had become “too frustrating to bear,” which drove him to “take [his] life with his own hands.”
Teen suicide is nothing new, as young men and women historically struggle with new social expectations and as new feelings emerge with young adulthood. But in a twist that is less startling as the members of their ranks grow, Kramer’s death has been deemed a “masturbacide” – a recent, disturbing trend in which young men (and less frequently, women) end their lives by inducing cardiac or respiratory failure through masturbation.“I had no idea that Tommy was capable of this,” said Mrs. Virginia Kramer, Tommy’s mother. “I am still in shock, the loss is so great.”“No mother should ever have to experience this. To lose your only son, and only child, the pain is too much.”Authorities found the body after his mother tried to awaken him Sunday morning for church. “I normally just let him get ready on his own, but he didn’t respond after several knocks. I got worried and…. Horrible, just, this feels so horrible.”In a scene paramedics described as “straight out of a horror movie,” Tommy Kramer was found face down on his damp mattress. Only the note he had left on the nightstand gave any insight into what had happened or his motivation for doing it. Pamela Svenson, first paramedic to arrive at the scene, was still, three hours later, visibly shaken by what she had seen.“I couldn’t tell if he had been dead three hours or three years,” Svenson explained. “His body showed signs of decomposition that we almost never see in corpses that fresh.”“It was totally desiccated, dried up like some vampire had drained him of all his blood.”“We had to cut the fingers off his hand just to…” Miss Svenson said before being overcome with emotion and breaking into tears. “They don’t prepare you for that in EMT training.”Tommy’s father, Frederick Kramer, described his son as “Just a normal kid. He did well in school, he had a lot of friends, seemed to be happy. He always did his homework, never complained an iota about anything. Mostly he just stayed in his room when he wasn’t out with friends, either watching cable, or maybe on the Internet, like so many kids today. He was just… normal.”His mom and I are taking it pretty hard, obviously,” said Mr. Kramer. “That was our only child, it took us a long time to have him, but he was the happiest part of our lives.”Students at Tommy Kramer’s school were also devastated by the tragic event. School teachers have been staying late with medical staff to help students with their grief.Brittany Ashton was described by most of the school as Tommy Kramer’s best friend.“We were so close, he was like a brother to me,” said Ashton. “He was like a brother to so many, kind and gentle, we never felt he would hurt anyone, let alone himself.”“The way he would look away and smile when he made you laugh, I will always remember that.”“I mean, we talked about everything,” said Ashton. “We talked about my job as a model and salesperson at Vanessa’s Secret in the mall. He knew all my friends there, they all liked him as well. We had sleepovers even, with a few of the girls, just having him there always made us feel safe.”Kramer had no previous history of mental or emotional problems. His classmate and teammate on the football team, Tyler Dreiden, was at a loss to explain the tragedy.“It’s horrible, he was a great friend, I mean, he had problems like we all do, but …” After a pause, Dreiden added, “Have you spoken with Brittany? She was the one who knew him best. I mean, we played sports together, but he and Brittany, they seemed to be very close.”The Kramer family doctor, Dr. Erlich, had little to offer in terms of insight into the matter.Dr. Erlich echoed the words of Dreiden, saying, “This is a very hard loss for his family and out of respect I won’t comment too directly. But have you talked to his friend Brittany? Because she may have some answers. I usually see her up at the mall, whenever I happen to be up there, you know… in case you need to know where to find her.”Unfortunately, Kramer’s brief note left few clues. “I have been feeling a lot of internal pressure,” said the note. “The more I see my friends around me, they seem so happy. It’s like they just turned off the faucet of emotion that, for me, has been a source of great unhappiness.”“Seriously,” Dr. Erlich added, “You should see Brittany. As his best friend, she may have some deep insight into his motivations.”“He was so generous, as a person and as a friend,” Ashton said in a fourth interview, “there was nothing we wouldn’t share.”Kramer is the third boy from South Beach High to take his own life in this way this year.“It’s a very disturbing trend to us young people,” Ashton said in another interview the day after the tragedy at her workplace. “I just have no idea why he would choose to end his life in such a horrible way.”# # #