We shouldn't have to live with this
Senseless Halloween shooting in Orlando leaves 19-year-old student and one other dead
I’ve been rather unplugged from the news lately, at least by my standards. It is strange and a little embarrassing to admit since I work in news. Every day, my client work involves following current events and covering them to some degree, so I am well-versed on the latest happenings in politics, culture, and news. That’s especially the case now, as the country is days out from a presidential election.
But when I woke up Saturday morning and read about a mass shooting that had been committed in downtown Orlando, Florida a few days prior on Halloween, I was shocked. Seven people were shot, two killed, and ten total injured in an area frequented by college students and young professionals. I know the area well. How had I missed this?
After a little research, I realized that it wasn’t just because I hadn’t kept up with the news over the last few days that I had not seen this story.
There are two types of mass shootings in America: the kinds that involve a mentally ill white kid who goes on a shooting spree, often despite repeated warnings made to law enforcement, and the kinds that happen in Chicago every weekend that nobody, including the media, cares about. For example, most Americans would be surprised to learn that this past July 4 weekend, 109 people were shot in Chicago in 74 separate shootings. That is a shocking, unbelievable number for a city in the United States of America.
The Orlando shooting last week was the latter type of shooting. It’s why it initially received virtually no coverage, aside from a few local and state outlets. The usual activists who seize every opportunity to push for restrictions gun ownership were nowhere to be found.
The suspect in the shooting is 17-year-old Jaylen Dwayne Edgar. He is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted first-degree murder.
Edgar began firing just after 1 a.m. According to the Orlando Police Department, there were as many as 100,000 people in the downtown area. The shooting sent thousands running for cover.
Edgar ultimately killed two people: 25-year-old Tyrek Hill and 19-year-old Timothy Schmidt Jr.
Lamaria Dean, Hill’s cousin, called her cousin’s killing “evil,” and said Hill’s mother found out about her son’s death on Facebook.
“It’s just so senseless that a person so evil can wake up and decide, ‘I’m just going to take a life today,’” Dean said. “This is not how you want to find out about anything,” she added. “That’s how his mother found out. You don’t want to go on Facebook and see people recording him, laying like that.”
Schmidt Jr. was a freshman at the University of Central Florida and grew up playing soccer in Weston, Florida. It was his first semester away from home. Just hours before going out that night, Schmidt Jr.’s father texted him to “be safe and have fun.”
Tim Schmidt Sr. would never hear from his son again. In fact, the next time he saw his son was as he searched for details about the shooting on X for answers. Schmidt Sr. saw his son lying motionless, receiving CPR from a police officer. He was later told his son was shot in the heart.
Schmidt Jr.’s close childhood friend, Simon Gonzalez, was with Schmidt Jr. the night of the shooting. He had traveled to Orlando for the weekend and was staying in Schmidt Jr.’s dorm. Though they were walking together as part of a larger group when the shooting first broke out, they quickly became separated as shots were fired. Gonzalez repeatedly tried calling Schmidt Jr., but received no response. He assumed his friend had lost his phone in the chaos.
Gonzalez and other friends in the group eventually returned to Schmidt Jr.’s dorm. It was then that they learned victims were taken to Orlando Regional Hospital. Beginning to think that Schmidt Jr. might have been a victim, they reached out to the hospital for answers but were told to go in person for more details.
On the way to the hospital, Gonzalez saw what was likely the same video of Schmidt Jr. receiving CPR that Schmidt Sr. saw on X. The hospital wouldn’t confirm any details with Gonzalez as he wasn’t family. Schmidt Sr. called Gonzalez at 4 a.m. with the news. His best friend was dead.
“He was a very happy, studious, overachieving, hardworking kid like many kids out there,” Schmidt Sr. said of his son. “He was just out to have a night of fun like any college freshman would. And he was simply involved in a senseless shooting.”
Schmidt Jr.’s killer should not have even been out on the streets. Edgar was not a first time offender; last year he was arrested by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office for grand theft of a motor vehicle. According to a local news report, Edgar, a minor, was taken to the local juvenile detention center. But because juvenile court records are confidential in Florida, little else is known about the outcome of that case. Local news also appeared to indicate that he was a high school dropout.
What is obviously known is that he was released after committing that crime, and it’s likely due to judicial lenience as opposed to his innocence.
In a civilized society, Edgar would have been locked up after his first offense. Because he wasn’t, two people are now dead.
On X, Schmidt Sr. reshared posts that criticize Edgar’s mother for failing to parent him and that call for no leniency. He called them “maggots,” presumably because all people like this do is take from society.
Responding to a picture of Edgar, Schmidt Sr. wrote “Fucking fry this bastard. Castrate him. Feed him to alligators. My son is one of two dead. Fuck this guy and his whole fucking family.”
Few should blame Schmidt Sr. for expressing this sentiment.
X later labeled the post as a call to violence, which means other users cannot like, share, or interact with the post. But Schmidt Sr. wasn’t calling for violence. He was essentially calling for justice for his son’s death in the form of the death penalty.
There is nothing redeemable about scum like Jaylen Dwayne Edgar. He is a lowlife and contributes nothing to society. He is filth personified. The rest of society should not be forced to share public spaces with him. We shouldn’t have to live with this.
The good thing is, we don’t have to. Crimes can be punished. Criminals can be held to account. There can be deterrents to future crimes. Grand theft of a motor vehicle and other crimes people like Edgar commit can be punishable with prison time. All of this is possible if we as a decent society so choose.
Juvenile arrest records also shouldn’t be confidential in Florida. It’s likely that they are confidential in the name of protecting teenaged criminals from the stigma of their crimes to “give them a second chance.” But their second chance could be someone’s last. Decent, law-abiding citizens deserve to know who local law enforcement is releasing out onto the streets and why. Show me any proponent of criminal justice reform or soft-on-crime policies that would willingly live next to or send their child to school with a teenager with a criminal record.
Of course, they wouldn’t. No person would. “Equitable policing” sounds nice when it’s just theory…until it’s your kid who gets shot and killed because the system was lenient to a past offender.