Reading and writing about Lily Burk

LA Observed contributor Nancy Rommelmann, at her blog up in Portland, steps back and considers the murder of 17-year-old Lily Burk, the way she and others have written about it, and her thoughts of vengeance toward the killer. In the piece, Nancy admits to second thoughts about posting a Native Intelligence item about the crime. Sample:

I was part of the problem....I had qualms not about the writing, but the posting. I felt as though I were barging into the room of a patient who’d suffered third degree burns, moving close to the bed despite knowing my touch might infect him, even one breath. I had not seen Lily or her parents in years; I had not known them well. What was I doing here?

I posted it anyway.

People started to forward what I’d written. I received acknowledgment. I received an email from a writer, a woman extremely friendly with the family who said she was thankful I’d written because she couldn’t express what she was feeling; that what happened to Lily “makes me want to put my own daughters back inside my body.”

I passed along that sentence to three people. I may have used it, later, in a blog post. But I stood back from writing anymore about Lily; I didn’t think it was my place; within a day there were so many people writing about her, classmates, local publications, national, international. Her death was on the TV news.

Later in the post, Nancy writes "The day Lily’s parents found out their child was gone; I knew the cable in their hands had gone slack. They were holding it but it didn’t lead anywhere. I didn’t know how they could go on, or how we were supposed to support them."

Memorial coverage: Stories on Sunday's memorial for Lily Burk by the L.A. Times, Daily News, CBS2, KNBC, KTLA, ABC7, Fox11