Losing Faith, Finding Fear

         The details are fuzzy but the events of that day are still there. Who would ever think that your neighbor, the boy you had a crush on for years, would turn out to be a killer. I was eleven years old when it happened, to young to realize how this one event would change the way I viewed the world. 26 years later, I still think about it everyday, about the horror that unfold inside that house in Poughkeepsie, NY.
         Compared to Kendall Francois, the Poughkeepsie serial killer, Brian Britton is not well known. At just sixteen years old, Brian murdered his mother, father, eight year old brother, and wounded his sister. Trying to understand why this happened still escapes me, what would push someone so far that they felt they had no other choice but to kill? I have come to realize that knowing would not quell the fears that were born in so many that day.
         It was March 1989, I remember being ushered into the hallway of our house, the dead quiet as we tried listening to what was happening right outside. Sneaking a peek out the window to see the police cars and the broken white picket fence that once lined our front yard. I recall my mother frantically pacing and none of us saying much of anything. The extent of my memory ends there.
         While I do not recall most of the events of that day, I do remember the feelings. Confusion, fear, the utter shock when we were told what actually happened, he had shot and killed his family but brians sister was still alive.In the years to come, these feelings have never left me. The fear is the worst, The fear that someone so close, someone you loved could just snap. That fear has lead me to isolation, to mistrust. It was the first step on my path to losing faith in people.
         Brian is now spending his days at a correctional facility in upstate NY and I wonder often if he regrets it, if he could take it back would he? His sister now has a family of her own and continues to fight to keep him locked up. Her strength is unparallel to anyone I have ever met, and the fact that he will be free someday scares us all.