Students from Cathedral High School will hold a candlelight vigil outside their school at 8:30 tonight in memory of their classmate Conor Reynolds, the 17-year-old senior who was stabbed to death Saturday night outside a party at a St. James Avenue restaurant. Earlier in the day, grief counselors were at the school to meet with students reeling from their classmate’s death.
Details are still sketchy about the details of the stabbing, which left a second Cathedral student with non-threatening injuries, although reports say police have a description of the stabber.
Violent crime is, sadly, not uncommon in Springfield; several hours after Reynolds’ death, another Springfield man, 35-year-old Corey Melvin, was stabbed to death, allegedly by his domestic partner, whose attorney said she’d been abused by Melvin. Reynolds’ and Melvin’s were the city’s second and third murders of the year.
Violence might not be rare in the city, but usually it takes place worlds away from the world of Cathedral, a well-regarded, private, Catholic school attended largely by middle-class kids, and the alma mater of many of the city’s leaders and their own children. In Springfield, violent crime is more likely to happen in poor and rough neighborhoods, or in the downtown bar district, and often is drug- or gang-related.
Reynolds’ murder has inspired much public attention, from numerous media reports to outraged public statements from the mayor and police commissioner and statements of sympathy from the Roman Catholic bishop. In a racially diverse, often racially strained city, some no doubt will question if this case is receiving particular attention because Reynolds was white, and wonder whether there would be such public sympathy if he were a black or Hispanic teenager from a rough neighborhood.
But maybe the reason Reynolds’ murder is hitting so close to home for so many in the city is that he reminds them of their own kids. The brief details that have emerged about him so far—a star soccer player, a student at a well-regarded school, spending his Saturday night at a party thrown by a classmate—suggest the kind of kid who you’d expect to be “safe” from that kind of violence. Reynolds’ murder, no doubt, leaves many families—of all races—wondering just how much they really can protect their kids in an unsafe world.
