The blood spills. The wagons circle. A child is lost forever.

On the first day of 2008, a fourteen-year-old girl, Stefanie Rengel, was slain in my neighbourhood. A seventeen-year-old boy and fifteen-year-old girl, whose identities are protected under our Youth Criminal Justice Act, are now in custody. For some, the sorrow has morphed into outrage, with calls the accused be tried as adults. I try to imagine my reaction had this been my daughter. Would I demand vengeance? Would I feel closure seeing these children shuffled off to the prison? All I know is, the deed has been done, and my child is gone forever.

At the end of the linked article, you will find comments left by friends and family on the girl's Facebook page, the last of which reads as follows:

"this world disappoints me."

Me, too, I'm afraid. It disappoints me to see children killing each other. It disappoints me to see the media salivate over these atrocities, eager for yet another martyr. It disappoints me to see virtually no one spot the similarity between this and what happens on any given battlefield. It disappoints me to live in a world in which settling disputes or accumulating worldly desires by brute force is standard practice.

When kids kill other kids on the front lines, we call them "heroes". When they do it in the schoolyard, we call them "delinquent".

I hope, one day, Stefanie Rengel will be left alone by the crusaders, allowed to rest in peace.

I wish I hadn't had to write this; alas, here we are again.