The other nine-year-old victim in Pima County, AZ

A couple of weeks ago we all grieved the loss of Christina Taylor Green at the hands of senseless violence. But not many of us have heard the story of Brisenia Flores. She too was murdered in an act of senseless violence at the age of 9 in Pima County, AZ. We don't have many endearing stories about her life because the little notice her death has gotten has been about that awful day it happened. Here's some of that story- not for the faint of heart:

"Early on the morning of May 30, 2009, Raul Flores heard a knock at the door of his Arivaca, Arizona, home. When he opened it, he found a man and a woman claiming to be law-enforcement officers in search of fugitives. Minutes later, the man shot Flores to death. Then, authorities say, he pumped three bullets into Flores’ wife, Gina Gonzalez, who survived but played dead. “Why did you shoot my mom?” Gonzalez’s 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia Flores, asked the gunman, according to prosecutors. Those were her last words. The man put a gun to her head, fired off two rounds, and killed her."

The trials for the 3 people that have been arrested for this murder started last week with the alleged ring-leader Shawna Forde.

The portrait of Forde that has emerged is one of a self-imagined border security crusader who would finance her anti-immigrant activities with violent robberies. Forde had a habit of ending her emails with the sign off, “Lock and Load” and had close ties with tea party groups. She was involved with the Minutemen American Defense—her supporters claim she was once a Minuteman National Director—a loose affiliation of anti-immigration border activists who took to policing the border on their own with guns and surveillance equipment. Forde has also had ties with the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform. These groups have all been labeled hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. FAIR has distanced itself from Forde, and the Minutemen have disavowed one of their most enthusiastic members.

If the trial proves that this woman financed her hate-group by robberies that ended in killing any possible witness, including a 9-year old girl, its hard to imagine a more depraved human being. And I'll leave it to you to decide if there is reason here to call out the hate-mongering of the anti-immigrant forces at work in Arizona. Nuff said...