The news was altogether too horrendous.
"Please give me my baby," a mother cried as she stroked her kitten. The cameras rolled and flashes dotted her face as she made a grave plea to find her abducted 11-year-old daughter. Then, suddenly, it became worse than expected.
Her daughter had been found dead. First the victim of kidnapping, and now first-degree murder.
Although it sounds like a chilling episode of "Law & Order," this story is very much a painful reality for Susan Schorpen and Joe Brucia, the parents of Carlie Brucia, a Sarasota, Fla. girl whose kidnapping last week at a carwash was caught on tape. Carlie was later found slain near a church.
Kidnapping has become a crime the American justice system is continually fighting against, as more than 2,000 cases of missing children are reported on a daily basis. While many psychologists are willing to label the individuals who commit these crimes as "sick," "confused" and "mentally ill," we must realize their true nature as predators and be aware of the menacing threats they pose to our children, or rather, our future.
Although the sad case of Carlie Brucia is recent, most Americans can recall at least one other memorable child abduction. Some cases like that of San Diego's Danielle van Dam turn out tragic, ending in murder, while others, such as Elizabeth Smart, a Salt Lake City teen missing for nine months, are recovered and joyfully reunited with their families.
Local cases, such as that of Mikelle Biggs, a Mesa girl abducted at the age of 11 in 1999, prompted state leaders to take measures that would prevent crimes of a similar nature from happening. Arizona moved in the right direction by adopting the Amber Alert System, a "critical missing child response program that utilizes the resources of law enforcement and media to notify the public when children are kidnapped by predators." While the Amber Alert and its similar programs have not put a stop to the kidnappings, the decrease has been more than significant.
In a matter of minutes after an abduction, the entire state can be notified, and with pertinent abductor or vehicle information, each of us joins in the search to bring children home and to bring these criminals to justice.
While all of us may have an opinion on kidnapping and the tragedy it brings into the lives of the victim's families, kidnappers should be labeled with another title: thief. They rob children of their future, and they rob families of the completeness they once had. While other families grow together and watch their children grow and age through life, families of abducted children can only watch their children grow through age-progressed photos, with hopes of being reunited some day.
As Joe Brucia pleaded for his little girl, he said, "Release my daughter. Let her go. With some help and some love she can heal." Unfortunately, the help and love is needed now more than ever for her parents as they mourn her loss. "She's in a better place," Brucia said. "She got there in a horrific manner, but now she's watching me all the time."
If you have any information on a missing child or a kidnapping incident, please call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST. Some immensely grateful parents will thank you for it.
John Ronquillo is a journalism senior. Reach him at johnron@asu.edu.
