Kids, Blunts and the 'Burbs

Once again, Texas makes national news with the recent discovery of a video tape of two teenage kids handing a marijuana blunt to a two-year-old and a five- year- old and urging them to smoke away.

The videotape was recovered from a home in Watauga, which is a rag-tag suburb of Fort Worth.

And since I used to write about criminal activity in this particular burg, I can't say that I'm all that surprised.

In the early 1990's I was sent to the home of a grieving Wataugan whose 4-year-old son had been shot and killed. The father's grief over his son was sincere --- the guy was absolutely beside himself. But his story about how his poor son died was complete garbage.

Dad says he, his son, and his roommate were out for a drive with no particular place to go. They just happened to wind up in East Fort Worth, in a part of town known for drug dealing, and became lost, he says. Dad tells me he pulled his pickup into a motel parking lot to ask for help. Of course, this motel was known for drug dealing. And even if you didn't know that, it's not the kind of place and reasonable person would ask for direction --- the was only one way in and one way out of the parking lot, and tons of shady people regularly hung out there. Nobody went to this motel unless they were in the market for a particular brand of sin.

So Dad tells me, after I questioned him five different ways, that no --- he did not go to the motel to buy dope.

So, according to Dad, a guy in the parking lot just started shooting at his pickup truck for no reason. The cops later arrested the shooter for murder. Even the shooter was more forthcoming -- he told dectectives that Dad had taken part in a crack deal gone bad. Dad was tried for injury to a child. I can't remember if he got convicted. But it didn't really matter. This guy was destiny to live in a prison of his own personal hell for the rest of his life for his stupidity.