I don't post too often in this forum, but today I feel I must. I heard about this sad disappearance a week ago as one of our family's oldest French friends from Arlington Virginia (next to Washington DC) had mentioned it. The missing girl was her daughter's classmate and had been in her Brownie troop and she knew her well. She was worried sick about this as was her daughter.

I said, 'could it be one of those things where the girl went off with friends and didn't mention it to her parents?" and she said, 'her parents were up there visiting her for the parents' weekend, that's why this is so scary. She is not the irresponsible type of kid.'
Michelle had traveled and worked in other countries and was interested in ecology and in Latin America in particular.
She had eaten dinner with her parents, then gone with a couple of friends to celebrate someone's twentieth birthday. She was last seen asking someone to use a cell phone as hers wasn't working and she called her friends to reassure them.
This man is now the suspect and when they questioned him, he was arrested for a sexual assault on a child.

Well, it's over now...as they've found her body.

I called my friend in Virginia and said, 'I just heard...I suppose you have too.'

She said she and her daughter were looking at photo albums of the kids when they were little. Brownie group photos and they'd found the girl smiling and laughing.

I told my friend that, it seemed like there was some grain of insanity in people, and I'm sorry to say this, but, it's seemingly acted upon more often in America than elsewhere, or else it's just the aftermath of the Amish killing. Is there some lack of sanity, or jealousy of the happiness of others that they want to take that away from others?

So the investigation continues and yet I have to wonder, this kid had traveled all over the place and managed to stay out of harm's way...and then in her own country, just walking home a few blocks, she meets her fate. It does not seem right.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061013/ap_on_re_us/missing_student_24

I know some people are going to say she shouldn't have done this or that, but, when you have a flat tire or you're stuck somewhere, and your phone doesn't work, you need help and you have to trust people sometime. You may not have a choice. I keep thinking she'd gone through many ambiguous situations all her life, and then, a seemingly innocuous place and she meets this tragic end.

My prayers are for her family and those friends who were with her that last time, they must feel terrible not to have walked with her.

It's a very sad and moving story, but you do a grave injustice to your fellow Americans in accusing them of some sort 'national insanity'. Throughout the world, murder and violence occurs daily, sometimes on a huge scale, and those who lose loved ones to violent crime, terror, or war feel the same sense of bereavement and loss, no matter how or where they live.
The brutality in the Darfur region of Sudan, the Congo, Zimbabwe, North Korea and many other countries makes the rare and generally individual crimes occuring in the USA look almost insignificant by comparism.
You can't blame a whole nation for the crimes of a few evil minded individuals.

How very sad this has happened. But I think Aramis is right. We cannot blame everyone for the actions of a few.

I would think there was a story before the one you listed Heather. This one doesn't seem to give us enough information. I'm thinking that she must have thought it was okay to be walking alone up the street at 2:30 a.m. Did she just "find" this guy walking up the street? Or did she meet him at the party??? I'm sorry, I just don't understand -- her parents are visiting her and she goes out to a party? Were it me going to visit my child at school, I would expect him or her to spend time with me, not going out with friends. Don't want this to sound like I am hard hearted, I'm just confused because there doesn't seem to be enough information. Did her car indeed have problems?

I used to live in Spain and didn't have another thought about walking down the street at 2:00 in the morning, coming home from a friends house. I would do it here, too, in my "safe" little neighborhood. But on a college campus, at that age? I don't know.

My heartfeld sympathy for her parents, you, and her friends.

I think a little bit of mild risk taking is part of being young - young people need to move out from under the shelter of their parents' experience, and have their OWN experineces to base their life choices on. It just breaks my heart that sometimes the consequences of a just-slightly-wrong choice can be so dire.

We've removed most of the wild predators from our lives - no more wolves or cougars to worry about as we walk through the woods. A scratch or a fever does not bear the chance of deadly infection as it did in my grandparents' day. Yet these old enemies seem to have been replaced by human predators.

She had dinner with her parents, then went to a place with some friends for a twenty first birthday celebration.
She was to call her folks up the next morning to go out for brunch.
Her cell phone wasn't working and so, in the photo from a jeweler's camera, you see her asking this guy to use his and she called one of the friends.
I am thinking that she was walking home to her place and wanted to reassure them she was ok.

I still maintain that there is a grain de folie in my country because with all the benefits we supposedly have of education and lack of starvation like those places suggested, with our supposed superior way of life, there are people out there, and most of them with jobs and normal lives, who act out their personal demons on others.
In America, you can get a weapon easily to do so and your right to have a weapon is staunchly defended. This may not be the case with this murder, but, just the thought that someone can't go to their car, or walk home a few blocks without a guard, is frightening.
I know this happens in other places, but, with the enormous gap in living standards we supposedly enjoy in America, and education, and opportunities to work, should we still see this savagery acted out on so often now?
When the Amish were shot, you still heard people saying that teachers should be armed and it would not have happened! This is the craziness, that in a supposed developed country you hear people saying this and they believe it.

This kid had worked in other countries with fewer material advantages and in fact, that was one of her dreams. I'm sure she had to trust strangers as I have during my own travels around the world, and then, in her own country in a relatively quiet town, she lets down her guard once, and that's it.

I think that she was in her comfort zone and didn't insist enough on having a friend walk her to the door. (but then, what about that friend who must walk somewhere too? think about the logistics)
I don't find the fact she went out after eating with her parents surprising as my own daughter had dinner with us recently and then went to a club event after that that began later in the evening. She lives in a vital college town too and has to go get her car if she's driving anywhere in a parking lot a few blocks from her place. She had a few auto breakdowns at night when coming home from work...so what if the first person who stopped to help her was a predator?

I think the type of kid who invites her parents up to a parents' weekend is basically a good kid and at ease with her parents. Lots of young people would shudder at the thought of having their parents around at that age. I wonder what the rate of participation in these things is actually!

I am convinced that it was a combination of being in a comfort zone as she wasn't far from home (statistics indicate we have more traffic accidents close to home for this reason) and also, she'd gone through much more difficult situations in Africa and South America from what I've read. The proximity of her folks may have even been a factor. She was going to have brunch with them. (I'm sure that most parents of a kid that age do not require slavish devotion to them in this situation). Then, the predator happened to be there that night when she let her guard down.
Washington DC isn't exactly the safest place to grow up in either. Arlington is the suburb of DC. The kid had lots of street smarts so the smaller college town probably led her to believe it was safer.

Who knows though...perhaps he isn't the actual perpetrator. I wish them the best of luck in finding out what happened.

My friend said they'd be going to the funeral...with great sadness at having shared a few years of her childhood.

By the way, I discussed this with someone else who basically said he had no sympathy for anyone staying out after ten in America because there were too many crazies running around. I told him that going to McDonald's in the States was riskier...you could always be the target of some guy who'd lost his wife and kids in a divorce case and wanted to take it out on those who had not.

I live in a vital college town. I basically grew up here. I went to that college, took night classes, walked the paths between buildings in the dark, alone, because when you have to attend a 6:00 - 9:00pm biology lab, and don't know anyone else in the class, you find your own way to your car. I was 17 then. 2 years earlier an 18 year old UNL college student named Candice Harms was kidnapped only blocks from where I usually parked, then brutally raped and murdered, by two men impersonating police officers. It rocked our humble little corn-fed world. And yet, there I was, leaving my bio lab well after dark, walking alone into the downtown area to my car.

But we learn from things like that. We learn that even a home-grown boy or two can grow up bad. Candi Harms' murderers grew up here. One lived only blocks away from my husband as a child. We learn that even in America, even in the "wholesome" midwest, men like Scott Barney and Roger Bjorkland live, and kill, because they can get away with it. Or sometimes not. And we learn that a young woman alone at night, even in our relatively safe little city, is not really safe, and we carry pepper spray on our key rings and air horns, and whistles, and we take self defense classes.

I think that the main point to be taken here is that America is NOT as different as we like to think. We might miss the reminders because they happen a couple thousand miles away from us, but our high standard of living does not, in the end, make a difference to someone who has that core of bad in them. And why should it? Wounds fester in America. And we don't see them because we blind ourselves with righteousness. We are the "leader of the free world" and sometimes I think we lose sight of anything but the sparkle of the stars on our flag. It isn't that I think America truly has a different kind of evil than elsewhere. It is that I think America, or Americans, tend not to see the same evil here that we condemn elsewhere until it is too late, and no matter how often it shows itself, it always catches us a little by surprise.

I don't plan on being caught by surprise. But I still walk my little sister to her car instead of the other way around. Sometimes you make the conscious choice to put yourself in that situation, because the alternative is sacrificing someone else to it. Someday I might regret my choice, but not if it would have been someone I care about instead. Maybe that is part of America's psychosis. I don't know.

Well, this past week they've been holding the suspect and all sorts of charges are coming up. The Bail bond was refused at one point as the company said they didn't want to grant him bail in light of the charges.

However, Rooney had not yet been accused of the murder until the autopsy results were performed.

He denied any involvement beyond loaning the girl his phone to call her friends with whom she was walking up to join.

Just in, some information is coming out about the DNA matches (he had tried to refuse giving a DNA sample at one point) and that it's positive for Gardner-Quinn's blood.
I hope that they've kept all this discreet so that they could convict him of this horrible crime.
Other crimes against women are surfacing though. He apparently liked to knock out his victims. There are even videotapes of him doing this to an ex girlfriend according to some news sources.

http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=5565460

I am hoping that they have solid evidence for a conviction. I know that he's innocent before being proven guilty, but, let them use all the scientific knowledge they have to convict him properly.
I would not be surprised if her family was the type to actually try to find it in their hearts to forgive him...