MD Boy Burned By Acid--Culprits May Be Local Kids

Over the weekend, I noted that a young Maryland boy was severly burned by acid poured over playground equipment in Baltimore County. The search for suspects continues:

The culprit might be, as one criminologist says, a sociopath seeking to inject fear into a setting for lighthearted family fun. Or maybe a sadist who set a trap and lay in wait to watch a victim fall into it.

More likely, Baltimore County's police chief says, the person who doused a playground slide with acid last weekend at a Middle River elementary school was a youngster from the neighborhood.

"For some inexplicable reason, we've got somebody from this neighborhood, I believe no doubt young, who got some sort of emotional high," Chief Terrence B. Sheridan said yesterday. "It's the kind of senseless thing that a few, maybe two, three or more youngsters, would get together and do, something dumb, something destructive, because they're bored."

As the toddler who suffered third-degree burns after going down the slide underwent surgery yesterday, investigators were talking to officials from area schools as they tried to determine who might be responsible for the crime.

Just days after a similar incident in Texas, a cleaner containing sulfuric acid was taken from Victory Villa Elementary School during a burglary and splashed throughout the school playground.

And the young victim's relatives surely were not alone when they asked: Who would do such a thing?

Who indeed?

N.G. Berrill, a forensic psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, compared the incident to anthrax scares and people spiking food with dangerous substances. The aim is usually not to exact revenge or to make a political statement, but to "whip a community into a frenzy," he said.

"It's not a personal beef, it's not a personal conflict. It's more a person at odds with their community," Berrill said.

"Terror is the end product," he added. The perpetrators "feel for a moment very powerful, very strong when you watch a whole community recoil and respond to being hurt."

He raised the possibility that the Middle River incident is a case of adolescent boys "who can in groups have a sadistic streak, who think it might be funny to burn kids and see the parents freak out."

Of course, it is natural for people to wonder about who would do such a thing and wonder what it says about our society. But, when looked at from the same viewpoint as the Virginia Tech massacre, I don't think these isolated incicdents can be extrapolated into some lesson about our society. These acts are too random and too far afield from our normal experiences for us to have any idea as to why they occur or what they mean.

Tragedy is not rational nor should we try to rationalize it.