By Thomas Lifson
The demonization of the commonsense expression “all lives matter” has reached the point of lethal violence against those who utter it, if an eyewitness account of a murder in Indianapolis is true. This deeply distressing story of an incident on Independence Day weekend had received zero coverage in the mainstream media until Fox News picked it up a few hours ago. Bradford Betz writes for Fox:
An Indiana woman was fatally shot earlier this month following an alleged argument between her family and a group of Black Lives Matter supporters, her family says.
The woman, 24-year-old Jessica Doty Whitaker, was walking along Indianapolis Canal Walk with her fiancé, Jose Ramirez, and two other people around 3 a.m. on July 5 when someone in their group used a racial slur, Fox 59 reported.
A group of nearby strangers overheard the comment and confronted Whitaker’s group, according to the station.
Ramirez alleged that the group shouted “Black Lives Matter,” to which either Whitaker or someone else in their group reportedly responded with, “All Lives Matter.”
A brief argument ensued until both sides separated after realizing the other was armed, Fox 59 reported. Ramirez claimed that both sides managed to resolve the argument before separating.
But minutes later, someone reportedly opened fire from a nearby bridge, striking Whitaker, before running away, the station said.
“It was squashed, and they went up the hill and left we thought, but they were sitting on St. Clair waiting for us to come under the bridge and that’s when she got shot,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez admitted to returning fire but did not hit anyone. He told Fox 59 that he has had to explain what happened to Whitaker’s 3-year-old son.
Early accounts of the incident in local Indianapolis media did not mention the expression “all lives matter” as a trigger, but then Cassandra Fairbanks of Gateway Pundit reported on Saturday:
Her father, Robert Doty, told the Gateway Pundit that the BLM supporters had walked by her and her fiance and said “Black Lives Matter,” to which Jessica responded that “All Lives Matter”….
The U.S. conservative blogosphere started to pick up on the story, followed by the U.K. Sun and then the Daily Mail, and now Fox News. The story has already gained enough traction that a GoFundMe account established for Jessica’s family has already raised more than five times the goal of $10,000, with the story now breaking wider on a Monday morning.
If anything good can be salvaged from this awful killing, it would be a pushback against the demonization of “all lives matter.” Claims that those three words are racist are self-evidently ridiculous. If it is untrue that all lives matter because “black lives matter” is trendy and being pushed heavily, then some lives logically do not matter. Because of race. That position is abhorrent. And it may have led to murder.