What happens when “adults” refuse to stop using drugs even though they have children? They create a culture of crime tolerance, of course.
And what do we suppose happens to a kid who grows up in a town full of people who think the buying and selling of illicit drugs is no big deal?
He gets murdered by a drug dealing rival:
YELLOWS SPRINGS — The Town That Time Forgot. Little Moscow. Hippie Heaven. Tie-Dye Village.
Over the decades, Yellow Springs residents have learned to grin and bear the stereotypes about their charming community and long-time home to Antioch College.
But what residents won’t abide is the notion that there is any more drug use in their village of 3,700 than anywhere else in America.
“I’ve lived in Yellow Springs for 15 years, and I don’t see any drug activity at all,” said Vick Mikunas, a former radio personality on local station WYSO. “I saw more activity when I was living in Des Moines.”
Jennie Hudson, who has lived 17 years in Yellow Springs, agreed. “I don’t know anyone here who has said it’s OK for children to smoke pot and take drugs. No one has ever said, ‘They’re just experimenting.'”
But some Yellow Springs High School students tell a different story.
“I could walk from here (the high school) to High Street and I bet I could find cannabis (plants) growing in about a dozen backyards,” said freshman David Teyber.
Parents in Yellow Springs allow their kids to smoke marijuana “because they still want to do it themselves,” said junior Jake Auten.
Six years ago, when Yellow Springs High School senior Tim Lopez disappeared after signing out for lunch on Jan. 22, 2002, his principal and teachers never suspected he was selling marijuana nor that his classmate, Mike Rittenhouse, was a rival dealer with connections to a major drug ring in Yellow Springs.
Lopez’s body smoldered for nearly two weeks in Rittenhouse’s basement bedroom in his parents’ home, where he had bludgeoned his classmate with a baseball bat and stuffed the body in a large storage tub. He later moved the body to the garage. When his father asked about the smell, Rittenhouse told him it was “a science experiment gone bad” and set fire to it, according to court testimony.
Rittenhouse later buried the body in a shallow grave, underneath heavy brush, in his backyard. There it remained for two years until February of 2004, when 1999 Yellow Springs graduate Umoja “Iddi” Bakari (aka Elijah Smith) was arrested in Columbus on charges of shooting and abducting another man in a drug dispute. To save himself, Bakari told police where they could find Lopez’s body.
Gee, you think Rittenhouse’s dad likes the weed? It’s difficult to believe the scenario described in the article.
“Hey son, it smells like death in here” the father wheezes asthmatically while clutching his bong. “It’s my Science project dad, now get back in your room or I’ll cut you off!” little Mike Rittenhouse would shout, his booming voice sending his drug-addled tie-dye clad father scurrying back to his bedroom where he could type out another diary on DailyKos.
It’s incredible really. Rittenhouse killed a kid in his house and let the body rot there and his parents didn’t know. But they weren’t the only “adults” in Yellow Springs living in a hazy dreamland of drug use without consequences:
Yellow Springs police Chief John Grote called the task force’s investigation “a splash of cold water” for his department. “We’re giving a lot more attention to drug issues,” he said.
John Gudgel, who has been principal of Yellow Springs High for 14 years, said there was nothing about Lopez, Rittenhouse or Bakari to raise suspicions at the school. All three were average students, played school sports and appeared to be college bound. Bakari was the son of a respected massage therapist in town, Gudgel said. His younger brother is an accomplished singer and his younger sister excels academically.
“Those are all reasons why, as a school, we were shocked to learn these things,” Gudgel said. “You can hear a lot from people on the street, but you can work in a school setting as principal and think you’re on top of things when obviously you’re not.”
Jennie Hudson, who was Lopez’s nanny from age 11 until he turned 16 and could drive, said Lopez may have been selling marijuana, but Rittenhouse was known to be carrying a gun.
“That says so much more to me than, ‘Yeah, we got a dime bag (of marijuana) from him for the party on Saturday,’ ” Hudson said. “From my experience, marijuana dealers don’t have guns.”
That may have been true decades ago, but not any more, said Phyllis Coontz, an expert on the economics of drug trafficking who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. “I think (guns) are a necessary part of the job. In an underground economy, the only way you exert power is by using force or threatening people with force.”
With the advent of crack cocaine, she said, drug operations around the world consolidated into major cartels. “The drug industry today has become very sophisticated. The drug cartels control everything. You don’t have these kinds of mom and pop operations you had in the ’60s and ’70s.”
Hudson said she tried to warn Lopez that he was risking serious harm by selling drugs. She often watched over Lopez while his single mother, Barbara McQuiston, traveled on business. McQuiston, who now lives in California, did not return a phone call requesting an interview.
“We talked very openly about a lot of things, even drugs,” Hudson said. The summer before his junior year, “I told him how when you run with people like that… it’s a different world, it’s a drug world. They will kill you for 30 bucks.”
Way to go Jennie! That open honest talk about pot, the one where you no doubt relayed your “experience” with pot dealers being non-violent, was just what Tim needed. Not some sort of adult intervention, not for a person who was his “nanny” up until a couple of years before to pull rank and say “No more bullshit pot dealing kid.” No just a couple of conversations, maybe while sharing a spliff and instilling in him a total lack of boundaries.
The worst part of the case is that Hudson clearly did care about Tim and went looking for him when he disappeared. She got no answers from his classmates and peers, even though she believes they must have known what happened:
Gudgel said the best deterrent to drugs in the school are the students themselves “because kids are our best informants, and they don’t want to see drugs in the building.” He said that in a junior and senior high school of just 375 students, “these kids know each other to a fault. They’re not going to keep any secrets. They’re going to tell.”
But Hudson is not so sure. She said one of the most disturbing aspects of Lopez’s murder was that some students must have known what happened, or at least had an inkling, but not one spoke up for more than two years.
“After Tim went missing, I asked every teenager I knew — What could have happened? What could have happened?” she said. “It was only after he was found that it all came pouring out. Why didn’t more of it come out before then?”
Yeah. Weird, it’s like they were raised without morals. It’s almost like there is some dysfunction in their lives that keeps them from learning the difference between right and wrong:
As some students claim, there are parents whose recreational drug use sets a bad example for their children, Gudgel said. “We have heard statements from parents like, ‘I know my son or daughter gets high. But if they do it, I’d rather have them do it at home than out on the street.’ But I don’t think our community is any different from other communities that have that contingent. Look at what happened in Centerville” where a school board member recently resigned for having underage drinking parties in her home.
Is it any wonder an environment like that would produce a Mike Rittenhouse?
