This morning I saw again the flier offering a $10,000 reward for information on the murder of 13-year-old Lazarus Jones. This child was beaten to death in February 2007 by a pack of youths around 9 p.m. half a block from our apartment. There are still no leads in the case. Which turns my stomach, as this child was beaten on a very busy street, next to a liquor store that is open more often than not. There always seem to be a few people hanging around, probably doing the same thing I've done when I've patronized the place - picking up some snacks and pop on my way home from the el.

Yet no one saw anything. I take that back - some people saw enough to report to the police that Lazarus was being chased by gang members, that he slipped on a patch of ice, that he was beaten to death. What no one cares to mention is the identity of any of Lazarus's attackers.

The blog "Missing and Murdered Children" http://missingandmurderedchildren.facesofthemissing.org/?p=145
tells more of the story.

I did not learn of this boy's harrowing death via a blog, or via the television news, the radio, or the paper. I'm a single parent and a working mother. I'm still trying to figure out how others like me keep up with all of that. I found out about this child via one of my only contacts with the adult world - my babysitter. When I got home from work a few nights after the murder, she asked that I call her a cab from now on, that she did not feel safe walking the few blocks back to her dorm at 6:30 at night after what had happened to Lazarus Jones.

I called her a cab. I refused her offer to pay for it. And I swallowed the words I wanted to say to comfort her - that she was a young white woman and that she had little to fear from the gang members in our neighborhood. Nobody was going to bother her. They'd rather pick on their own - or on someone like Lazarus Jones, who was not a gang member but was of the neighborhood. There's less chance of getting caught that way, I suppose.

Comfort. Those words are no comfort at all - that some of us can expect to be victimized, and others of us can expect to not be victimized.