The Case of the Missing Cheerleader

         The young girl yelled, kicked, and struggled as the middle-aged man pulled her toward the car. He grabbed the neck of her pep club sweater when she nearly escaped, pulling it out of shape. The crowds of junior high football fans flowed around them in the dark parking lot, but no one seemed to notice, much less stop.

          “Help me!” the twelve-year-old screamed as the man stuffed her into the open driver’s door and slid in after her.

          “Some kids these days,” a woman muttered to her husband. “They just won’t mind their parents. Look at that girl refusing to get in the car.”

          “You think that’s what’s going on, a father trying to get his daughter in the car?” her husband asked before unlocking their car doors.

          A few people watched the car, with the girl beating on the side window, speed from the parking lot. No one called 911; no one contacted a school official there for the game. The girl’s stepfather drove around the emptying lot twice before returning home, angry that the girl hadn’t met him. Finally hours later, the girl’s mother called the police.

          The next day, Jennipher’s nude body was found miles away in a ditch. She had been molested, tortured, and murdered. Less than an hour after her body had been dumped, Dewey George Moore was picked up by the police. Months later, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death.

          Family members and friends suffered the loss of a bright, loving young woman, but her death was so unnecessary. If the school personnel, people in the parking lot, and/or her parents had used common sense, Jennipher would probably still be alive.

          The school didn’t have anyone patrolling the parking lot, which was open to the public. No teachers, coaches, principals, or security guards waited in the dark to protect a student who was literally dragged along the pavement and forced into a car. Just one “official” person questioning the abductor would have sent him running without Jennipher.

          If any of the parents had shown a small amount of interest in what was occurring, if one had approached the struggle and asked what was wrong, Dewey Moore would have taken his hands off the girl and made his escape. But not one person, not even those who knew Jennipher, questioned what he or she observed.

          Jennipher’s stepfather told her to watch for him as he drove through the lot after the game. He expected her to find him, instead of telling her to wait by the gate into the stadium until he stopped by her. If she had been close to the lighted gate, rather than wandering through the parking lot as expected, Moore would not have risked snatching her.

          Jennipher’s mother did not call the police until hours after her husband arrived home without her daughter. Another if, if she had, the police would have immediately tracked Moore down, because they knew he had recently been released from prison and was a sex offender. However, around two the morning after being taken, Jennipher, after suffering for several hours, died at his hands.

          The sad and disappointing thing, I find, is that schools still don’t supervise parking lots, that people still stand and watch as harm is being done, and that parents still don’t watch over their children or other people’s. Children are still kidnaped, tortured, and killed at the hands of adults while adults, who should care and guard them, don’t do what they should.

          Someday, I will write the whole story in memory of my niece who died too soon at the hands of a monster. Now, I keep praying that people will care for our children, fight for them, ask questions, and demand answers.

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