The Pros and Cons of CSAs
Seattlest Pix 09Nov08
Weekly Around the -Ists
Seattlest Pix 09Nov09
Can't Miss It: Monday
The man who shot Nicole duFresne on New York's Lower East Side was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole this week. Nicole made a name for herself in Seattle's theatre community before doing what promising artists tend to do when they feel they've outgrown Seattle. She moved to New York. There she worked as an actress and a waitress until one night she, along with her finace and some friends, came in contact with Rudy Flemming and some of his friends who were seething after a few failed muggings. Nicole challenged Flemming by saying, "What are you going to do, shoot us?" She died at the scene in the arms of her fiance Jeffery Sparks.
Sparks wore the bloodied shirt he had on that night to the sentencing Monday. Rudy Flemming wasn't in attendance, but watched via a video link as Sparks delivered what the New York Post calls "a victim-impact statement so moving, several in the courtroom were in tears."
"Rudy Fleming, I wish you'd come out here," Sparks began, pausing hopefully."It took me a long time to find a best friend like Nicole duFresne," he continued. "And, um, we were happy.
"And" - he paused again - "you took a gun, and you pointed it right at her, and you just took her away."
"I hope that you go away for the rest of your life," he added. "I hope that you spend the rest of your life thinking about her every day. If you do, you and I will have that in common. We'll be on the same page about that."
A friend of duFresne's who was there when the crime occurred was also in the court room:
Along with Sparks, two friends of duFresne who were with her that night bitterly lashed out at Fleming for not even having the decency to face the charges."Nicole had courage," said Mary Jane Gibson, 31. "You are a coward. May you have the courage one day to admit what you did."
Nicole's father did not attend, but said in a statement:
"Seventeen days I lived in hell as the trial unfolded," Tom duFresne, her father, wrote. "Not one minute more will I sacrifice to the coward who murdered my first child, the light of my life."
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Given the momentous occasion of the conviction, it's fine time to remember that The Stranger's associate editor, Charles Mudede, was a perfect asshole upon her death:
This was in relation to a submission to their insipid "I Anonymous" column, which read in part:
Good to remember that the ever-so-liberal Stranger employs editors to remind women not to fuck with the men-folks, and to remember when to shut their mouths.
although (almost) anyone would agree that no one deserves to be murdered, i think that ultimately there's something that can be learned from all this -- especially those of us who live in urban areas.
"A New York Shooting -- And What The Victims Did Wrong"