THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406240470
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940626 LENGTH: Medium
It was less compelling, certainly, but no less tragic. In its own way, it was more frightening.
{REST} They killed Mister Softee in South Philly last week.
They shot him down in cold blood, robbed him and left him in the street. As Mister Softee lay there bleeding, that eerie music tinkling from his ice cream truck, a knot of kids gathered and laughed. Some danced, witnesses said, and made up chants that they sang over his body.
``Mister Softee is dead. He didn't give out enough sprinkles.''
Mister Softee died 45 minutes later. A 16-year-old was arrested the next day.
Officially, Mister Softee was Mohammad Jaberipour, a 49-year-old immigrant from Iran. He'd been on the job just 10 days, the kind of job only an immigrant will take these days, picking up small change on menacing turf in the inner city. He sold frozen treats to kids in a furnace-hell of a neighborhood.
Another ice cream vendor, Ehab Elgagry, arrived just after the shooting.
``It wasn't human,'' he told the Philadelphia Daily News. ``When I got there, people were laughing and asking me for ice cream. I was crying. They were acting as though a cat had died, not a human being.''
``Mister Softee is dead. He didn't give out enough sprinkles.''
Something important separates Mister Softee's death from the deaths of O.J. Simpson's ex-wife and her friend. If the prosecution is correct, they were the victims of one man's inability to contain his rage and jealousy. It's a story out of the Old Testament, ancient emotions that tug at each of us to one degree or another.
But there is little biblical or literary precedent that would prepare us to watch our children laugh and sing over the riddled body of the ice cream man.
``Mister Softee is dead. He didn't give out enough sprinkles.''
It was easy to watch the O.J. Simpson drama, to talk about it and think about it, because there were a limited number of possible outcomes: suicide or surrender, another funeral or another courtroom rhubarb. Neither was a pretty picture, but each was quantifiable, capable of being placed in mental brackets that would cause us no long-term discomfort.
It is not so easy to talk about or think about the murder of Mister Softee because we have no idea of the possible outcomes. How far has the social fabric unwound when its children can chant and twirl over the body of the ice cream man? How much further can it unwind?
That is a mental dark alley where few of us care to venture. We don't know where it will lead, so we avoid stepping in there to begin with.
Still, it's hard to staunch the sound coming from that darkness, a weird and bloodless tra-la-la that chills like a single fingernail drawn across a blackboard.
``Mister Softee is dead. He didn't give out enough sprinkles.''
Where can it go from here? by CNB