The Terrible Loss of Jamil Baskerville Jr.

                 Most of the time, I am well.  It helps me that my beloved youngest son left the Earth quickly, and without pain, by God's calling, and not by violence.  I often wonder how parents of children who were victims of violence and who died as a result fare, when they are eight years past the loss of their child, as I am.

                Yesterday however, I heard something that has stayed with me and has broken my heart.

This is Jamil Baskerville Jr., in a family photo

         Last Saturday, in Pennsauken  N.J., a 24 year old man, Zachary Tricoche, became upset with his girlfriend over not bringing home some groceries he liked. They reported that a fight ensued. The woman's  two year old son above, is reported to have become upset when Tricoche shoved his mother, and he tried to defend her.  Tricoche took his fist and hit the child in the chest sending him into a wall.  When the child got up and came at him again, he punched him again so severely that the child hit the wall again, this time hitting his head and becoming unconscious. Then the child vomited and became unresponsive.  Jamil was pronounced dead later at the hospital.

          What kind of a person tells a two year old to "put up his hands to fight", before beating him to death ? Why would he think that his role would be to fight a child rather than to lay his own life down in order to protect one ?

There are too many people who have deliberately caused the death of a small defenseless child. Small children are fragile.   What kind of a monster would do such a thing ?  Then I prayed for little Jamil, and I got an answer.   The kind of person who would do such a thing, is a person who was also raised to believe that a two year old is a man, and that it's appropriate to fight like a man against a 24 year old.  A person who was raised with ineptitude and evil, will grow to see a two year old as competition and will attack him. Evil begets evil just as good begets good.

I also cannot imagine my not getting between an attacker and a two year old in a similar circumstance.  I wonder if his mother simply didn't understand what was happening or whether it all happened so quickly.

In your own life, make doubly certain than unbalanced, unstable or violent individuals are not permitted near the vulnerable children you know.

 On autopsy it was determined that Jamil's liver had been ruptured and that he bled to death internally. This is an end no child should ever endure.  Tricoche is imprisoned on a million dollars bond awaiting trial for homicide.

  Sadly, there are children in foster care who have only narrowly escaped such an end, and who will carry such a memory throughout life. It is not the shocking aberration that it should be.

       I pray for the remaining family of Jamil, here on Earth.