Thread: The unspeakable happens in our land of immigrants

The unspeakable happens in our land of immigrants

January 6, 2008
By Tom Houlihan

For years, I've watched young Hispanic guys ride their bikes down 159th Street.

I've seen them in warm and cold weather. I've seen them on beat-up bikes that were new sometime in the 1980s.

It's always been my assumption that they are coming to and from jobs in kitchens at restaurants along LaGrange Avenue in Orland Park. I assume that they live in apartment buildings in Oak Forest and that the bikes are the surest way to get to work.

These, of course, are nothing more than assumptions. And they are based on even more assumptions on my part - that the kitchen staffs at more Chicago-area restaurants are overwhelmingly Hispanic, that many are immigrants to this country, that some of the apartment buildings near the Oak Forest Metra station have significant immigrant populations.

I know all my assumptions could be wrong.

But I do wonder about those young guys on bikes. And I wonder about their stories. How many of them left their homes in Spanish-speaking countries and how they are trying to make a go of it in our land of ice and snow.

Stories about immigrants are often compelling and that's why I wonder about those young guys.

We were all shocked last weekend by the horrific fire at one of those Oak Forest apartment buildings, LeClaire Station, located just north of 159th Street. Now, a week later, it looks like this may also be a story about immigrants.

And it's a story many of us may consider beyond comprehension. Prosecutors said Subhash Chander, 57, who lived in a nearby apartment, started a fire last Saturday night at the apartment building where his pregnant daughter lived with her husband and 3-year-old son. Monika Rani, 22, died with her husband, Rajesh Arora, 30, and son, Vansh.

Chander has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder, arson and one count of intentional homicide of an unborn child. As many as 70 other persons were left homeless by the fire.

Prosecutors said last week that Chander set the fire because he didn't like his son-in-law, whose status he considered inferior because he was from a lower social caste in India. Chander was upset by what he considered a "cultural slight," prosecutors said.

I don't really understand this. Most of us like to think our American society is relatively free of a class system and that it's possible to live a good life - to get an education, work hard, buy a home and start a family - even if we were born in humble circumstances.

This crime has been described as an honor killing but I don't understand what that means either.

What I do understand is that three people are needlessly dead. That this is a genuine tragedy at a time of year when the love of family and good wishes for the new year are in the forefront. And many others - I'm assuming they're also working people trying to raise families - lost their homes.

According to one SouthtownStar story, Rani worked at a local McDonald's. Arora worked at gas stations in Chicago Heights and Steger and was exploring the possibility of buying his own gas station. Some regular customers cried when they heard the news of his death, his employer said.

In this country, where just about all of us can trace our ancestry to another country, there are many happy stories about immigrants. This, sadly, is not one of them.

All we can do is shake our heads and wonder how the unspeakable happens.

Tom Houlihan can be reached at (70 802-8820 or thoulihan@southtownstar.com.



http://www.southtownstar.com/news/houli ... ol.article

Report I have read shows this as an "honor killing".





Manhunt for Father Suspected of Killing Teen Girls
Wednesday, January 02, 2008



IRVING, Texas — Police continued searching for a man suspected of shooting his two teenage daughters, including one who called 911 about an hour before officers found them dead in his taxi, police said.

Yaser Abdel Said, 50, of the Dallas suburb of Lewisville, is accused of shooting Sarah Yaser Said, 17, and Amina Yaser Said, 18, in his taxi Tuesday night and abandoning it in a parking lot, leaving them to die.

Police have not released a motive for the shootings, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in its online edition Wednesday.

Click here for more from MyFoxDFW.com.

One of the teens called 911 on a cell phone about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and said she was shot, but she couldn't tell police where she was, Irving police said.

Officers were dispatched to the area, which turned out to be about half a mile from the taxi, but didn't find anyone, The Dallas Morning News reported in its online edition Wednesday. Police found the taxi with the bodies inside an hour later after a witness called and reported a suspicious vehicle in a hotel parking lot, said David Tull, an Irving police spokesman.

Police described Yaser Abdel Said as about 6-foot-2, weighing about 180 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a black turtleneck shirt or sweater, a brown coat and tan pants. He is believed to be armed with a handgun, police said.