Latasha Norman's Death and Other Murders of College Students

If the victim of a murder is a college student, the case will get massive news coverage. The murderer will most likely be found, and be put in for a long time if not forever. Comparisons made to murders involving college students and other murders concludes that if there is a college student that is the victim of the crime, the press will put much more attention on the case then if the victim was not in college.

There are several explanations. First, the future of the nation depends on education of young adults, and when one of these gets robbed of their life it robs the whole nation. One also likes to think of college as a safe place to send the kids, and when reality proves otherwise, the news will sell extremely well.

A study conducted in 2001, found that out of 15,980 murders committed in the United States the same year, only between 40 and 60 murders involved college students on or off- campus locations. That means that only 0.3% of all murders involve college students.

Regardless of the statistics, for some people that does not matter anymore. The families of Terrance Aeriel, Dashon Harvey and Iofemi Hightower have lost their loved ones due to a robbery that ended with murder in Newark earlier this year. Aeriel, Harvey and Hightower were all in college and university when they were lined up against a school wall and were shot in the head. Neither one of them had a record with the police, and was excellent students.

Laura Dickinson was murdered in her dorm room at Eastern Michigan University around a year ago. The investigation was kept in silence after her body was found half naked and with a pillow covering her head. Police also found semen on her leg. Later investigators arrested a fellow student Orange Amir Taylor III, 20, and only after this the university acknowledged the truth that a murder had in fact taken place on campus.

A student of Morehouse College in Clayton County, Carlnell Walker Jr., was brutally murdered by four former students of the same college. This prestigious Black male college has in the aftermath suffered from several other more minor scandals.