January 1992

I was glad to have our first report on Queen City PeeWee Basketball in Monday's paper. The kids would get to see their names in print, always exciting for a youngster.

But Jessica Butts never got to see her name.

Butts, the Queen City fifth grader, was one of three family members found slain in their home Monday morning. Two bicycles are propped up against the trailer on Walnut St. where the bodies were found. They won't be pedaled again by Jessica and little sister MacKenzie.

Police say someone the Butts knew, or their mother knew, saw to that in a brutal, savage, inhumane way. The senseless deaths of three people can never be classified as good, but perhaps the people of Atlanta and Cass County will realize they're not in Kansas anymore.

Continued growth of drug abuse and its related crimes plague every community in America. Not just the big cities. Not just somewhere else.

Here.

Now.

I'm not saying the Butts' slayings were drug related -- they are just eye-opening reminders that anything that can happen in Dallas or Shreveport can happen here. Maybe not with the same frequency, thank God, but the same acts kill in Atlanta, Texas as they do in Atlanta, Ga.

We, as a community, hope the persons responsible for the deaths of the Butts will be arrested quickly and tried with firm justice. That then brings us to other problems: jail overcrowding, the court system, and its related loopholes and exceptions to the rule.

Atlanta waits in fear for news of who did it. Mothers are holding their daughters hands a little tighter as they venture out, if they go out at all.

Someone stole three lives.

Someone must pay.

Sonny