Violence on our streets is too common

THE weekend tragedy of the murder of a teenager in Dunleer is the third such violent death of a young person in just over a week.

You cannot put the death of any one person over the death of any other person for behind each death is a story of a bereaved family grieving their lost loved one, but to lose someone as young as 18-year-old Cameron Reilly is truly tragic.

No father, no mother expects to lose someone so young and in such tragic and violent circumstances.

The news broke in the days following the tragic deaths of 24-year-old Jastine Valdez and 14-year-old Ana Kriegel in two separate and unrelated incidents in Dublin.

A 13-year-old boy has been charged with the murder of Ana Kriegel and in the hours after the death of Cameron Reilly a number of youths were questioned by Gardai.

We are making progress in Irish society on making fronts, but the use of violence in the daily headlines is a cause for concern and a worry for all.

It seems that almost every weekend there are headlines in the national and local media about violent assaults on our streets and it seems that the first instinct is to hit out and the seriousness and viciousness of the attacks are getting more and more violent.

How we have reached this point is a something we really have to study and find a way back from this dreadful spectre of young lives being ended by violence.

We cannot connect the three most recent deaths with each other in any way without knowing the full backround to each, but the outcome is the same in each case, a person is dead and families are destroyed.

We have tackled some of the big social issues in our society over the last couple of decades, such as the weekend’s referendum result, but we must start looking at the root cause of such violence in modern society and find a way to reverse the trend.

Without addressing the root cause of the issue we will only see more families heartbroken by the loss of a loved one.

Prevention is always better than detection and we must start an education programme in our schools to try and lessen the chances of today’s youths becoming tomorrow’s offenders.

Beyond the most recent tragedies, there are just too many cases of violence wrecking lives.