My group, the orange gummy bears, was focusing on crime in the regional area. My NY Times articles that focused on crime was the motorcyclist case and the Baby Hope case. In the motorcyclist case, it was about a man named Alexian Lien who got beat up by a group of motorcyclists because of his reckless driving. According to the article, it stated that the driver of the S.U.V knocked down a motorcyclist and out of fear, he pushed the pedal and fled away. While he fled, he hit another motorcyclist. This made the other motorcyclists angry and they hopped on their motorcycles and chased the S.U.V down. When they caught up to the S.U.V, they grabbed the driver and beat him up. Many outsiders were angry and I was also angry, but I’m not sure who I was angry at. I felt that they both were at fault, and instead of talking things out, they resorted to violence. I believe that Alexian should have apologized when he hit the motorcyclist and offered his help. In addition, the motorcyclists should have taken Alexian to the police station.

My other article was about Baby Hope and after 22 years, the mystery of her death has been solved. Baby Hope’s real name was Anjelica Castillo, and she was born in Queens and died at the age of 4. Her body was found in 1991 in a picnic cooler near Henry Hudson Parkway. The killer was Conrado Juarez, her uncle, and his sister helped him. The uncle sexually harassed Anjelica and killed her. His sister suggested that they hide the dead body in the cooler and forget all about this. Fortunately, police never gave up and soon the clues began to pile up and they found the killer. This case made me angry because I could not believe that family can hurt family, not just hurt, but kill. However, even though this was a tragedy, it also showed that no one should give up and people should be more hopeful.

These crime events in the regional area show that we need to be more cautious and help others when we can.