
Elliot Rodger (right) and his first three victims: Weihan Wang (left), Cheng Yuan Hong (top center) and George Chen (center bottom) from The Daily Express
Families of Elliot Rodger’s first three victims – his two roommates and the young man who happened to be visiting at the time – have expressed outrage and dismay over the media’s focus on the depraved killer rather than on his victims. On May 23, Rodger stabbed and hacked to death Cheng Yuan “James” Hong and Weihan “David” Wang, both 20, who shared the apartment with Rodger, and George Chen, 19. He then went out in his BMW on a shooting spree in Isla Vista, California.
Their survivors particularly resent the fact that Barbara Walters is coming out of her recent retirement to interview the killer’s father. In a statement to ABC News, they wrote: “As parents, we plea you not to focus on the killer side.” Instead, they asked the network to “pay respect to the six beautiful lives gone too soon.”
Do the parents have a legitimate gripe? They definitely do.
But is the focus on the killer understandable? That’s also a “Yes.”
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