I’ve taken my swipes at Nick Coleman before.   He’s deserved quite a few.

He’s also written some good stuff. Yesterday’s was one of his best:

So the most infamous of the city’s 59 murders of 2006 closes with tears, a life sentenced to rot in prison, and a mystery. No one may ever understand how a 21-year-old with nothing on his record to warn he might kill, who was not a gangster — “not a menace to society,” as his mom, Yolanda, tearfully told the judge — how it came to a point he sprayed an entertainment block with gunfire.

“He’s not the worst person we’ve encountered in this system,” the judge said, noting that Holliday showed some remorse after his arrest.

Holliday had been in AmeriCorps, helped build a house for a homeless family, worked at the Y, was hoping to go to college and had a chance to turn out OK. Somehow, he ended up on a street with a gun. And he took two lives — Alan Reitter’s and his own.

It’s actually worth a read.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 6:21 am and is filed under Media, Minneapolis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.