Editorial: Violence in Immokalee

A drive-by shooting in Immokalee the other evening injured an 18-year-old man and killed a 30-year-old woman.

She was the mother of four ranging in ages from 12 to 1½.

The two men in the car were after the man who was shot in the ankle.

The woman was an innocent bystander — joining other adults watching children play in a front yard.

With gangs everywhere in Southwest Florida these days, it was a flashpoint of violence that resonated from Estero to Marco Island.

There is no need to call on sheriff's deputies to do more to prevent such senseless, violent crime. Deputies cannot be everywhere, 24 hours a day. When cold-blooded thugs hatch a plan to go terrorize a neighborhood, they will do it.

Calling on the community at large to do something to end such crime is futile because most people already deeply resent street crime, even if it plays out far from where they live.

But it is appropriate to call on individual neighborhoods and even families touched by bloodshed to express outrage.

Outrage would be defined as standing up and declaring that they are not going to take it. They need to say that there is nothing macho or culturally acceptable about random or any other kinds of killing.

The case in Immokalee did take a step in that direction.

It was the mother of one of the suspects coming forward to investigators that led to the two arrests. When your own mother won't harbor and protect you, that is a clear signal of a serious wrong.

It might be the ultimate denouncement of violence — and inspire others living in fear to have the courage of her convictions.

Against the cultural backdrop of some neighborhoods handling their own problems and refusing to talk to police out of mistrust or fear of reprisal, her role might have been the only possible denouncement of violence. Bless her.