The airplane that crashed into the house behind mine yesterday. . . . the pilot did it deliberately. The police are calling it a homocide/suicide.

Apparently, the pilot and his wife were divorced and the wife had custody of their 8-year-old daughter. The child had spent the weekend with her father, but yesterday morning, the school called the mother to report that the child had not come in that day.

The father called his ex-wife on his cell a few minutes before the crash and told her that “I’ve got her and you’re not going to get her.”

The mother was at the police station filing a missing person’s report almost exactly as the plane was crashing into her parents’ house.

The little girl’s principal (a friend of mine) described the child as “. . . a dear little girl” who “got a kick out of things and enjoyed life. She just was one of those really friendly, really open little kids.”

Little children trust their parents, even parents who aren’t always nice to them. Little kids trust most adults. I will never be able to comprehend how a parent, or any adult, could do something like this to a child. People get angry, sure. People feel mistreated, sure. People win, and people lose, sure. People are frustrated and driven and upset and desperate, sure.

None of these things is any kind of excuse for laying a violent hand on a child, or including a little child in a cowardly act of ‘revenge,’ no matter what the circumstances. What this man did is unforgiveable. I wish I could erase the mental images of this little girl’s last moments, the worst of which would be the knowledge that her father was perfectly willing to murder her because he was mad at Mommy.

Obviously, he was mentally unstable. I believe all people who do horrible or criminal acts are mentally unstable. I do not believe that is a viable excuse or defense. He was scum.

And oh, that precious, beautiful, innocent, betrayed little child. . . . .