“There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you’re looking for a silver lining to the dark cloud of two homicides within two weeks in Peoria, it can be found in the fact that police have a suspect in custody for each case. There are still 11 homicides from 2006 that remain unsolved with nary a suspect.
Within a week after this year’s first homicide, police arrested Bryce K. Lowder of 1017 W. Wilcox Ave. “on a charge of murder in connection with the slaying of 18-year-old DeAndre T. Allen,” according to the 1/7/07 Journal Star. Today the paper reports that “Shane L. Heuck, 1711 N. Douglas St., was booked on a charge of first-degree murder in connection with the death of Virginia K. Mallow.”
Let’s just hope now that the state’s attorney will do a good job prosecuting them and get a couple of convictions.
Jennifer Davis reports in her Word on the Street column today that Ken Hinton is denying rumors that he will retire in February. In case you haven’t heard, the rumor goes like this: Due to health problems, Ken Hinton is planning to retire February 1 on the condition that he gets to name his successor, Associate Superintendent Herschel Hannah.
“Please write something about it,” Hinton said when we broached the rumor with him this week. “First I heard I was retiring in February, and then I heard it was due to poor health. None of that is true.”
If he isn’t retiring, then a good case could be made for the school board to fire him instead. In an earlier post, frequent commenter PrairieCelt made this compelling argument:
Hinton should be terminated, immediately. If he were employed in the private sector as CEO of an organization and made a unilateral decision to expend over 85% of the organization’s limited funds earmarked for replacement and upgrade of plant and equipment, undertook the acquisition of several parcels of real estate for his planned development (without prior board approval) based on a nonexistent agreement with another organization, and then had the whole undertaking blow up in his face, he would have been fired on the spot.
In fact, if the BOE is unable to replace the hard-earned taxpayer dollars expended on the purchase of the Prospect Road properties, dollar for dollar, Hinton should write a check to the district to cover the shortfall. Hinton is the one in the position of “public trust†and should be held to a higher standard of behavior/performance. Why should Peoria’s children have their educational futures mortgaged once again because of Hinton’s poor judgment and disastrous financial management skills?
Good questions.