Devon Epps: Picture the face behind the name
While I’ve never put this little corner of the Internet out as a crime blog, news source, or vigilante-inspiring screed, I do have a background in comprehensiveness…sometimes to a fault.
It occurred to me, though, that one thing has been missing in my ruminations (some would say unhealthy interest) on the death of Devon Epps. While I’ve gone to great lengths to describe just about anything I know about the case, for whatever reason, I’ve left out the most important thing.
Most of you don’t know what Devon Epps looks like.
I don’t think it was a conscious decision at the time, so much as it didn’t feel right. Now, it does. So, I spent a little time delving into the recesses of social networking sites and scraped a few pictures of Devon Epps off a MySpace memorial slide show. Despite being messed up by a truly horrible Flash program, the photos give you an idea of what the little boy looked like.
Next week will mark the one-month mark since Devon Epps died. The incoming information has slowed down a bit. The only thing of real importance I’ve heard in the past week involves the time immediately before and what was supposed to happen the day of Amanda Smith’s car wreck. However, as that information comes third hand, it’s best I don’t start posting rumors.
Here’s to a peaceful weekend for those who deserve it.
Previous Coverage:
Reading between the lines of Devon Epps’ death
Devon Epps, Amanda Smith and the difficulties of reporting crime news
Devon Epps: Scene of the Crime?
Rapid Eye Reality coverage of Epps case makes it to print
Labels: Crime, Devon Epps
Poor Devon. This is such a sad case. I find it hard to believe the mother has not been arrested yet. Keep us updated.
I feel this young man has no one to stand up for him. His death is forgotten. But I can not forget. Thank you for being a voice so we do not forget.
I keep searching for updates in this case. Something that says she’s been arrested. This is such a tragedy. However, the story doesn’t ring true. I myself am not a mother yet, but even for my nieces and nephew I would fight or attack (without regard for myself) anyone who dared try get their hands on them or any other child for that matter, so why not do all you can to protect your own child? Why? Because she was the attacker. I hope and pray that soon there is a resolution to this insane crime against a child.
You know, this case has haunted me from it’s beginning.
Whether it’s Amanda’s in-your-face attitude as she played Catch Me If You Can while this boy’s family was left to won You know, this case has haunted me from it’s beginning.
Whether it’s Amanda’s in-your-face attitude as she played Catch Me If You Can while this boy’s family was left to wonder if anyone would ever be held accountable for their loss or if it’s imagining what went down that night, I think about it a lot.
I think about that backwood’s road, like a lot of ’em here in Tennessee probably, nothing much in sight but the yellow squares of a Waffle House sign. And I imagine her stopping that car and getting out, maybe for a moment thinking “What am I doing in the middle of nowhere with nothing in sight but more road and my dead son in my car?” I wonder if it didn’t feel like a terrible nightmare; I wonder if she fell to her knees and cried with the regret of what she’d done.
And as she gathered courage from someplace that wasn’t God’s and began throwing rocks at her car, making “signs of a scuffle” on the ground, did she maybe half-think she saw her son’s face looking out at her in a kind of confused fear, his mouth forming the single word through the glass, “why?”
Amanda didn’t only commit murder that night, but big-time robbery, as well. Devon’s family was robbed of knowing the answers to those questions. They were robbed of knowing that he died peacefully, painlessly, without the knowledge that something was going terribly, horribly wrong. Did he realize that the very person in the world who’d given him life was now taking it back, and did he have time to wonder why?
I’ve been robbed of that sort of knowledge myself, and you’re just never really right after that. I don’t know that real happiness ever comes again; it hasn’t after five years, anyway. I hate knowing what I know that family is feeling and I hate whatever made that mother a monster even more.
I sometimes think about that. And I wonder why so many folks don’t believe in Heaven and Hell, in God and in Satan. Maybe because they’ve never seen them. I’ve never seen China, but I believe it’s probably there. It’s not that far a reach, not for me. I saw God when my own children were born, on a day when a family of two became a family of four in eight minutes, He was there. And Devon Epps, well he saw Satan the day his mother put those fat fingers around his neck and ended his life.
I still believe good is stronger than evil, I have to believe that or I think I’d lose it altogether. I hope to God the jury in this trial will show the world, in record time, what should be done with this kind of evil. Let them take her life, and let God judge where her soul should reside for eternity.
Godspeed, courts and appeals and the paperwork; let’s hurry this one on just a little. I’ve got a feeling something even more evil than Amanda can’t wait to get it’s hands on her.
Thanks,
Tonnie Moon
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