By Dallas Morning News Editorial
Mike Hickmon should be alive today. He should be with his children and his wife. He should be doing what he loved to do: coaching football, teaching the game he played.
But he is dead because of the sort of senseless, stupid violence that this nation is awash in.
Hickmon was gunned down during a fight that broke out among coaches at a preseason peewee football game in Lancaster. A preseason peewee football game.
What could have possibly been so important that this man lost his life?
Hickmon’s killing sickens the heart because there is just no reason for this. Like so many killings that we write about now, the combination of anger and a gun led to a tragedy that will bring pain for generations.
The suspect in the case, Yaqub Salik Talib, appears to have been involved in the fight. His attorney has said that the case has “heavy defensive overtones.”
We don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.
What we do know is that there was a solution here that could have spared this man’s life. And that was for people to just walk away.
The “tough guy” sense that a person can never back down from a fight is at the root of too much violence now. And the thought that a gun is a solution only promises that the damage will be that much more terrible.
People need to remember that the courageous thing, the mature thing and the right thing to do is usually just to walk away.
If we could convince more young men of that, maybe we wouldn’t have to hear stories like this one so often. Maybe more men could be home with their families instead of dead and gone for no good reason at all.
People who remember Mike Hickmon remember a gentle, kind person who was a leader for others. In a better society, he would be alive today.
