I can't tell you what it feels like to be bullied, bloodied or beaten into submission.
I can't describe in my own words the kind of paralyzing fear that can forestall the pain of a gunshot wound, a broken arm or a dead or dying child.
I can't answer the questions of those who fall to their knees, tears springing out like wells, begging to know, "Why me?"
All I can do is tell their stories.
I was eating ice cream and watching the sun set over Shelby Farms on Sunday when my managing editor, Scott Carroll, sent me a text message about the Saturday night robbery that left three men my own age without their most prized possessions but still alive.
Carroll wrote the story, on the front page of today's Daily Helmsman, while curled over a computer screen most of Monday evening.
I took over his duties while he listened to recordings of the victims as they described their ordeal. Our normally upbeat office hushed as Michael Bridges' voice cracked. The senior student said he asked God for forgiveness for a life he'd scarcely begun.
"After that, I just closed my eyes and was waiting for the bullet to go through me," he told Carroll. "It was the most terrifying moment of my life. I thought I was going to die."
As the 22-year-old editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, I've listened to my fair share of crime victims relay their experiences in chilling detail.
On a Sunday in 2008, a sophomore music major was snatched from the parking lot of Richardson Towers South and forced into a vehicle by a man with a handgun. Two suspects drove the victim around the Memphis area for several hours before releasing him around 3:30 a.m. on Atlantic Street, north of Sam Cooper, where he was told to "get out and run."
I found the student's identity after hours of searching that St. Patrick's Day. I spoke to his girlfriend, and when I called his home for a comment, his mother called me everything but a good, Christian woman.
On Tax Day just over a year later, I spoke to him while I searched for the victim of another crime, an aggravated assault outside the University Bookstore.
A music major putting in extra hours inside the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music's rehearsal rooms was Tasered 10 to 15 times by a man around 2 a.m. The suspect peppered the student with personal questions before shocking him in the neck and back. The criminal left the student lying in a heap east of the still-under-construction University Center.
I found the victims. I got my stories. I won awards for each that I don't like to think about. Green beer and income taxes hold connotations for me that most people won't understand.
I'm sure the string of Halloween break-ins tainted an otherwise cheerful holiday for these students as well.
In my own office, Carroll snapped at me as I edited his story. He wasn't thinking like an editor or a journalist. These men were his friends.
Bridges, Rich Harrell and William Taylor weren't just robbed, and Carroll wasn't just writing a news piece. The three were bound and bludgeoned, made to believe they would spend the last minutes of their lives in more fear than they'd ever known. Carroll, called to the scene to help remove their belongings, walked through their home hours later, stepping over pools of blood and broken glass.
I can't mend their frustration, anger or injury by relaying it to you, our readers.
All I can do is tell their stories.
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For the full story by Managing Editor Scott Carroll, see:http://media.www.dailyhelmsman.com/media/storage/paper875/news/2010/11/02/News/Nightmare.On.Southern.Avenue-3952936.shtml
