EVERY MURDER ERODES HIGH POINT'S CIVILITY

It's too easy for police and media to call it a "drug deal gone bad" when a
young man is gunned down in a dangerous part of the city.

It may be accurate to say that on many occasions. The drug culture is
violent. Life seems to hold less value to dealers and addicts than cocaine
and the money it brings. If someone is cheated, he answers with a gun.
Business takeovers are made with bullets rather than buyouts.

But that image tempts us to dismiss the magnitude of the crimes committed.
If we say it doesn't matter when drug dealers slaughter each other, we deny
the humanity involved. Life begins to appear as cheap to us as to the
killers themselves. We forget that murder is murder. It's an act of
destruction that makes our whole society more brutal and dysfunctional.

A murder, any murder, also impacts many people. It leaves a void in
families, both of the victim and the perpetrator, who may spend the rest of
his life in prison if he is caught and convicted. Those are people who do
not deserve to suffer.

Then there are occasions when what appears to be one of those "drug deals
gone bad" is something else. That may have been the case Sunday, when
20-year-old Bruce Cochrane of Stanton Place was killed by a shotgun blast
fired from a vehicle that pulled up next to where he was sitting on George
Place. Later, 18-year-old Brandon Lee Hunt of Amhurst Avenue was arrested
and charged with first-degree murder.

Police said the shooting was the result of a dispute over drugs, and media
initially reported that. Interviews by Enterprise reporter Robert Boyer
with the victim's relatives and residents of the neighborhood where the
crime occurred presented a different story, however. They said Cochrane was
not the man involved in the drug dispute but was dressed in similar clothing.

The shooting took place at night and happened in an instant. It's not
difficult to believe a mistake might have been made. If so, a young man
innocent of any wrongdoing was senselessly cut down.

No matter what the truth, the cold fact remains that one life was taken and
another has been drawn into the criminal-justice system, perhaps never to
emerge. High costs have been incurred, in human and monetary terms. And
High Point again appears to be a place where deadly violence can erupt on a
quiet summer night.

What some might call a drug deal gone bad is really a sign of a society
gone bad, and that can't be dismissed so easily.