It’s easy to point fingers when something goes wrong.
Hindsight, we all know, is 20-20. But in the case of 15-year-old murder victim
Tiffany Wright, the public deserves answers.
In today’s Charlotte Observer, a team led by reporter
Christopher D. Kirkpatrick documents the painful missteps that led to Tiffany’s
Sept. 14 death as she waited for a 
school bus in north Charlotte, eight months
pregnant.
The Observer story is painful in its detail. (Minutes before
Tiffany was shot, she was texting a schoolmate already on that bus.) And it’s explicit
in exposing failures in the system that was supposed to protect her. (A
Mecklenburg court clerk placed Tiffany under the temporary care of Royce
Mitchell, a convicted felon now charged with statutory rape and indecent
liberties against her. He’s also been named a “person of interest” in her
death.)
As much as anything, the Observer story speaks volumes about
the plight of children who, through no fault of their own, find themselves
without the protection of loving parents.
Aside from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department,
which defends the way it handled early allegations that Mitchell might have raped
Tiffany, no other government agency seems interested in talking – not DSS and
not the court system.
I hope the Observer will keep digging and demanding answers.
Tiffany deserved better.
