Wednesday, September 15, 2010

A vicious irony

Lemrick Nelson had done his time for stabbing Yankel Rosenbaum to death nearly 20 years ago, and had dropped out of the public eye, settling down with his girlfriend in New Jersey. Today, he's in a Harlem hospital after being stabbed himself by an unknown assailant in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

The police, according to an account in Tuesday's New York Daily News, speculate that Nelson had had a road rage encounter with his attacker. Nelson wasn't robbed, but his car appeared to have been sideswiped, and the police found the weapon, an ice pick, at the scene.

There don't appear to have been any witnesses to give police anything to go on in terms of suspects, so it may be left up to Nelson to cooperate with the police to find his attacker. Nelson had to go through two trials, one ending in aquittal, the other a hung jury, before being found guilty of civil rights violations and serving 10 years in prison. He did his time, and hoped the past would remain just that. As for the motivation behind the ice pick attack? No one knows, but it would be the cruelest irony if it came down to a hate crime. Blind hatred fueled Nelson's attack of Yankel Rosenbaum in 1991. What if someone else felt the same way, seeing Nelson after all these years?

They say fate can be cruel and harsh, but does the same apply to karma?

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