Easter morning.
The sun rises on a rolling hill in New Braunfels as worshippers gather to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus.
Yet as the dawn Christians worship, a savage domestic drama unfolds within yards of the sanctuary.
Felix Antonio Nieves, seventeen years old, dies as the result of what news sources have described as a protracted domestic argument.
The accounts of the last moments of Nieves’ life describe multiple weapons–stun guns, a pistol, and the shotgun used to end his life.
What is shocking about this story?
7:15 on Easter morning?
The quiet neighborhood?
The proximity to a church?
Or the knowledge neighbors have that their neighbors include law enforcement officers? That this is a neighborhood where people might feel safer because some of their own neighbors are officers of the peace?
Or again, that this neighborhood is within a mile or two of a police station?
Maybe. But what shocks me is that in a protracted story of domestic violence, no one called for police intervention until a murder had already been committed.
What does that say about Texas? About us? About justice?
We should call the police before we load and shoot a gun.
Why didn’t they? Why did no one call the police until it was too late to save one family from irrevocable tragedy?
The answers might surprise us all…if we were brave enough to face them.
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