RICHMOND, Va. -- Joining the 200 or so souls at the sunset vigil Thursday for slain convenience store owner Harshad Partel, I was hit by a powerful wave of deja vu.
Here was another heartfelt vigil for another immigrant killed in another convenience store robbery in the Richmond area.
We heard from people of different races and ages say why they loved Mr. Patel, how he knew everyone's names and stories, how he joyously blended into the community.
Harshad Patel
His wife was hugged and loved. Their two twin little girls held balloons for their daddy who worked so hard to build them a home in this land.
I was haunted by their little faces.
Why was this immigrant from India murdered in his store at 6811 Walmsley Boulevard Monday night?
He joins the long list of local convenience store murder victims, nearly all them immigrants.
They came from Iraq, India, Korea, Pakistan and other nations, searching for the American Dream and finding death.
Farooq Bhimdi, Mal Sun Ragin, Nancy Cho, Mohammad Bhimdi, Paresh Patel, Jin Sook Kim, Farooq Anwar, Meyong-Ja-Dan and others.
Some I recalled vividly.
The 2001 murder of Hamood Alshaif at the James Food Store also involved teen-aged suspects. Farooq Bhimdi on Mechanicsville Turnpike and Nancy Cho on Hull street were also deeply admired by the community.
Nearly all were.
And yet they were murdered.
So why is it we never talk about the possibility of racial or ethnic targeting with these poor folks? The vast majority of these store robbery/murders claim immigrant lives. Typically, they are not being killed by their own.
Are they killed because of some kind of cultural distrust or dislike?
We, of course, have an idea why they're robbed.
They open stores or work in high-risk neighborhoods, scratching to make a living, often working alone and staying open late.
My police sources tell me these immigrants tend to have more cash because they don't make routine cash drops. They have more ads in their windows, reducing visibility.
But why kill them?
Sometimes they are just straight up blown away - not fighting back or refusing.
Why not just rob them?
One longtime homicide investigator told me video surveillance has eliminated the once-prime motive in robbery murders - to silence witnesses.
(That kind of video helped crack this Patel case, by the way.)
That investigator also believes it's mostly just wanton disregard for life - anyone's life.
Longtime anti-violence crusader Charles Willis with United Citizens Against Crime said the same thing after leaving the vigil.
"It's senseless violence," he said once the all-too-familiar candles were blown out and the balloons were released. "I don't think it's racism. I think it's ignorance. Folks turn to violence because they don't know any better."
He blames long-entrenched poverty that promotes hopelessness and violence, things I've said often as well during my quarter-century of covering murders and other violence in RVA.
But I look at how these immigrants strive to fit in, how they pour their hearts and lives into these neighborhoods and then are just cut down, like they don't belong and don't matter. The callousness of it is staggering.
I feel the same thing every time there's a murder of a Latino immigrant during a street robbery.
Sure, we understand why they're robbed - they're known not to trust banks or have accounts and therefore likely have more cash.
But why gun them down?
(Most murders in Richmond are not cross-racial and often involve people who know each other. Those incidents are no-less tragic, and I've poured my heart into trying to get all of us to care enough to address the root causes, like concentrated poverty and bad public housing. We need to care about every one of these lives.)
Friends, when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin in Florida, we had more than a year of national discussions about profiling and cross-racial violence.
But we have these immigrant murders fairly often, and there's never that kind of discussion.
Yes, we understand why they're robbed. But why are they killed?
It's a question I think we need to be asking.
