A Horror Of Selfishness

In Albuquerque, Christopher Raines murdered his 9 month old daughter with a gunshot to the head to keep his girlfriend, Ashley Trujillo from leaving him. It's reported that he asked "Was it worth it?"

Horror barely begins to scratch the surface of what I feel.

His actions confirmed, of course, that Ms. Trujillo was right in wanting to leave him. He'd threatened their child before, holding a gun to it's head. But this time, he pulled the trigger making good on his threat.

There is something fundamentally wrong with him. People are reported to have made the usual responses about him - nice guy, didn't see it coming, yada yada yada. I say bullshit. He was raised to be that way. Probably by omission, but he was raised to believe using threats of violence would get him what he wanted and no one ever attempted to change those beliefs.

He was raised to kill his daughter. I put his beliefs and attitudes squarely in his parent's hands. They did not teach him that he doesn't own another person. They did not teach him that relationships can end. They did not teach him that there are options when men and women break up and children are involved. They did not teach him. They failed. They inflicted him on the rest of us.

Local news says Christopher Raines was assaulted by another inmate following his arraignment. Good. He deserved it. He confessed to what he did when he called 911 before his arrest. He deserves everything he gets from the courts and from prison life. I am praying right now that when all is said and done, Raines gets life without possibility of parole. Part of me - the small, dark, and spiteful part -- wishes on him things like extended stays in solitary confinement; fellow prisoners, guards and staff so contemptuous of him that no one will lay a hand on him (depriving him of the sensation of human touch); and add in a really, long healthy life so that life in prison for him means 80 or 90 years or even more.

How selfish he is! His girlfriend was clearly miserable enough to want out of the relationship. He made her unhappy. She was ready to move on. But, no. According to Christopher, she couldn't have her daughter and be with someone else. Murdering his daughter clearly proves Ms. Trujillo was right to want to be away from him, that she was thinking wisely.

Christopher Raines sold out on humanity when he put a .45 bullet in his infant daughter's head. No one will ever be able to say he's a good man again with a straight face. He isn't. He is an evil man. He is a vicious man. He is a cruel man. He is a merciless, petulant man. He is a ruin of a man. That's what his parents gave to our society. And yet a civil society will treat him with more tolerance and mercy than he ever showed the girl he said he loved or the child she bore him. Yay for us.