By Kate Selker
A few months before he was shot in the head, Marshall Coulter passed me in the hallway.
“Ms. Selker! Remember how otters hold hands when they sleep?”
Of course I did. I was the one who had told him about otters, one afternoon in the fall. I’d run into him after class and noticed he looked upset — school wasn’t always easy for Marshall. So I showed him a silly photo a friend had emailed me — two sea otters floating with their tiny paws interlocked. If you’ve never Googled “otters holding hands,” you should; it’s pretty irresistible. They do it so they don’t float away in the waves while they sleep. It’s how they stay safe at night.
Marshall loved the photo, and his anger thawed. He’d been fist-clenched and tight-lipped before, but he went on his way smiling. Later, he’d remind me about the otters, whenever he thought I looked tired or sad. He could be a challenging kid, but he noticed things like that.
And then, in July, he was shot. Unarmed, just a few blocks from home. He remains in critical condition.
The man who shot him, Merritt Landry, says he was afraid Marshall was going to break into his home. According to our local paper, the Times-Picayune, the police declared Marshall was not “an imminent threat” of any kind. The article draws a parallel to Trayvon Martin’s case, not simply because the victims were young and black, but also because Landry is arguing innocence for more or less “standing his ground.” But Marshall’s situation is unlikely to generate the outrage of Trayvon.
For one, Marshall had a criminal record for burglary. For another, he scaled Landry’s fence at 1:40 a.m. Marshall’s injuries have left him unable to speak, so I can’t ask him why he was there. But in the court of public opinion, he seems to have been convicted already. Reading through comments sections for the Times-Picayune and the New York Daily News, it’s hard to find readers outraged by the notion of a homeowner shooting someone on his property in the middle of the night. “I am appalled at this story,” reads one comment. “Why was he only shot once?”
And then I feel sick. I, too, am appalled – that he was shot in the first place. And that more people aren’t furious about the fact that a 14-year-old boy can step off his bike in the Marigny, one of our city’s “safest” neighborhoods, and get a bullet through the brain.
soulbrotherspeaks.com 