I usually don't talk much about local, national, or international news or issues here, but I am compelled to write about the double homicide that occurred this past Sunday morning in a quiet suburb of Lancaster, PA -- which is just a little over 30 minutes' drive from my house. I have been thinking about it almost every other minute since it happened.

I was en route to the supermarket on Sunday afternoon when an Amber Alert interrupted the broadcast of the radio station I was listening to in the car. A 14 year-old was reported abducted from her home following the murder of her parents. The Amber Alert did not give any other details at the time, except for the suspect's vehicle description and license number. I remember being a little shocked about it...the area where this all happened is almost bucolic, right in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country.

Apparently, this 14 year-old (Kara Borden) was secretly seeing 18 year-old David Ludwig, despite her parents' disapproval. Both kids hailed from very Christian families, and both were home-schooled. It appears that they had a physical relationship. From the accounts I've been following online, it appears that she told her parents that she was sleeping over a girlfriend's house on Saturday night, but was actually with him instead.

He dropped her off at her home on Sunday morning at 6 a.m. and left. Then her parents found out she was truly with David, not her girlfriend, so they called him and told him to come back to the house to discuss their relationship. Sometime between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., David Ludwig shot Mr. and Mrs. Borden each once in the head, grabbed Kara, and took off.

Was it premeditated? I don't know. From his Xanga blog, it appears he was an avid deer hunter. But why would he have brought a firearm into the home of his secret girlfriend's parents?

Did she participate in the killings, or is she a victim of the situation? Who knows. I was reading her Xanga blog yesterday (it has since been shut down) and it appears she was like any other girl in her early teens. From her posts, it seemed that she loved her family, though she alluded to some troubles she'd been going through several times. She also mentioned she'd been grounded once or twice.

I just wish I could figure out what was going through that kid's head when he made the decision to kill her parents. The first thing that popped into my mind upon hearing the news was that this was like a Romeo/Juliet thing, except instead of suicide, Romeo killed the Capulets (I know I'm weird).

Then I started thinking that maybe she is/was pregnant with his child. There was a conversation posted in her MySpace blog between her and an older (18) girlfriend that makes me think something deeper than just a covert relationship was going on between Kara and David.

Of course, all this led me to reminisce about my own teenage years. I myself was having sex at age 14 -- but my boyfriend was also 14, not 18. I don't regret anything I've done, but it strikes me that I could've potentially found myself in the same situation. I used to sneak some of my boyfriends into my bedroom in the middle of the night. I used to lie about my age so that I could talk to older guys. To me, this is all just typical teenage behavior.

Is it realistic to expect teenagers to abstain from sex? I don't think so, though I realize many people feel differently about it. If Kara felt that she didn't have to hide this relationship from her parents, would this tragedy still have happened? I'm not sure. From all accounts, David Ludwig has been painted as a nice, polite, normal 18 year-old kid. What switch was flipped inside his head to cause him to do this?

Maybe we'll never know.

So tragic.

Labels: bad news, deep thoughts, local news, scary, weird