They were intelligent, athletic, attractive, and fully engaged in life. They didn’t know each other. Two lived in rural middle America, one in Washington DC. They were doing what was an important part of their lives. Two were out for a run. One was on a golf course. They had no reason to suspect they would never make it home. They had their whole lives ahead of them. It seems likely they would have had successful lives and careers and made the world a better place. But the dark hand of fate would place them in the wrong place, at the wrong time. What happened to them was eerily similar. It could have happened to any of us, and we should all mourn their loss.
Mollie Tibbetts was a 20 year old psychology major at the University of Iowa. She was dog sitting at her boyfriend’s house in tiny Brooklyn, Iowa on July 18, 2018 when she went out for a run. She disappeared, and it becoming a national story. How could this happen in small town America to an All-American young woman? Her boyfriend, who was working out of town, was cleared as a suspect. The small town came together. A police search was launched. Her story and picture were all over the country. A suspicious car was caught on a surveillance camera driving along Mollie’s running route. It was traced to 24 year old Cristhian Bahena Rivera who worked at a nearby dairy farm, and was in the country illegally. He admitted following Mollie and running along side of her. When she threatened to call the police, he got angry. He claims he blacked out, and when he woke up Mollie was stabbed to death in his trunk. On August 21st, Rivera led police to the corn field where he dumped her body. Rivera had worked for four years at that dairy farm using a false ID. President Trump thought it would be a good idea to use Mollie’s death as an example of why his anti-immigration policies will keep us all safer. Mollie’s father struck back in his grief to tell the president to keep Mollie’s death out of his racist agenda.
Almost two months to the day, September 17th, in Ames, Iowa, Celia Barquin Arozamena, a champion golfer was playing golf by herself. Celia was from Spain, and was finishing up getting a degree in civil engineering at Iowa State where she was an All Big 12 golfer and Iowa State’s Female Athlete of the Year. She played through a foursome of older men. One said they could see how good she was, and let her go ahead. When the men got up to the 9th hole, they saw her golf bag and cell phone laying on the course. Concerned, they called the clubhouse and then 911. Police found Celia’s body in a lake on the course. She had been stabbed to death. Police got a tip from someone who told them an acquaintance had come to their house covered in blood and sand and with scratches on his face. Police found 22 year old Collin Daniel Richards at a homeless camp near the golf course. He had a long history of violent criminal behavior. He had bloody clothes and a knife with him. Someone who knew Richards quoted him as saying he wanted to rape and kill a woman. Celia was attacked on a sunny morning on a golf course in a place where we don’t think these things happen.
The day after Celia Barquin Arozamena was killed, 35 year old Wendy Martinez went out for a run around 8pm in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington DC. Martinez was an avid runner. She went to Georgetown University and was the chief of staff at a tech company. She was attacked by a man with a knife outside a Chinese restaurant for no apparent reason. She stumbled into the restaurant asking for help. You can see the last moments of her life on the video as people tried to save her. They couldn’t. She died at the hospital. Again surveillance video helped police catch a suspect, 23 year old Anthony Crawford was seen walking away from the scene in a yellow sweater. The charging documents say he may have been high on the synthetic narcotic K-2. Wendy had just gotten engaged the week before she was killed, and had picked out a wedding dress with her mother. Her mother said there is, “No room for hate in my heart.” Wendy will be buried in her wedding dress.
The stories of these young woman will fade from the headlines and from our memories. There are thousand of families that suffer from sudden unexplainable loss. They will suffer with the “What ifs?” What if Mollie and Wendy left a few minutes earlier or later for the runs? What if those golfers hadn’t let Celia play through? We all lost these fine young women who we would have been proud to have in our families. A prosecutor on the Celia Barquin Arozamena’s case called her death a “random act of violence”. This should teach us life is precious and when it’s lost this way, we are all victims.
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