Violence At A Pony League Game

There was a shocking incident following a Pony League baseball game in Palmdale, CA on Tuesday night:

A 13-year-old pitcher was accused of clubbing a teenage friend to death with a baseball bat, moments after the friend apparently teased him at a concession stand following his baseball team's first loss of the season.

The teen attacker, whose name was not released, was arrested Wednesday for investigation of murder and was being held at Antelope Valley Juvenile Hall as authorities prepared to take the case to prosecutors.

He is suspected of killing Jeremy Rourke, 15, after the Tuesday night Pony League game in this desert city about 40 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

The boys had no history of fighting, said Tony Trevino, coach of the Dodgers, which had just defeated the suspect's team, the Angels, when the clubbing took place.

"That's what's so shocking and so appalling," he said. "What happened? What did we miss as a community? What did we miss as parents?"

At the playing field Wednesday night, a family friend read a statement from Rourke's parents, who urged people not to demonize their son's attacker.

He "is not a monster. He's a good boy who made a bad mistake. This is a mistake that will haunt both families for the rest of our lives," the statement said.

This was a tragic event, but I sometimes wonder what people are thinking when they make statements like "what did we miss as a community". The community didn't kill this kid, the suspect did. Let's quit trying to spread blame where it doesn't belong. People need to be held responsible for their actions instead of trying to find something or someone else to blame.

I'm sure there will be much soul-searching by everyone involved in this case, but the bottom line is that a 13 year old kid thought beating his friend with a bat was an appropriate response to teasing, and given the violence that our kids are exposed to each day, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.

UPDATE: For some reason this post has attracted more comments than anything I've ever written. A couple of them were well thought out and reasoned, and the others were written by people whose vocabulary basically consists of three words, all of which are variants on the "F" word. I don't know if those folks are friends of the suspect, or are just people who think it's okay to beat other people with bats. Either way, those comments have been removed or edited.