Examiner.com

March 25, 2009



Loudoun County, Va. murder has markings of a gang initiation

On March 22, William and Cynthia Bennett left their Potomac Station home for an early morning walk and never returned. Shortly after 5:30 a.m., police found William, 57 lying dead, they found Cynthia, 55 badly beaten but still alive a short distance away.

Around 5:30 a.m., less than a mile from the Bennett home, a resident on Rocky Creek Drive called police to report the presence of a suspicious vehicle ( a white panel work van), and three men outside the van causing a disturbance.

By the time a Loudoun County Sheriff’s deputy arrived, the van was gone. However, the body of William Bennett was spotted by the deputy, lying near the intersection of Rocky Creek Drive and Riverside Drive (the same reported location of the white van). More deputies arrived and found the bloodied body of Cynthia Bennett.

Both had obviously been beaten with a blunt object.

Cynthia was sent by helicopter to an area hospital, where she remains in critical condition. The severity of her injuries have prevented her from speaking with police about the attack.

Loudoun County Sheriff Steve Simpson said: “We have a situation here which appears to be random.” Simpson went on to say that the attack may have been carried-out by gang members.
William Bennett was a retired U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel. Cynthia had also served as an Army officer. The couple have two children together.

Bennett’s murder is similar in both its brutality and randomness to other confirmed Latino gang initiations around the country.

In November 2007, a Gresham, Oregon man was nearly beaten to death with a bat by Abel Antonio Chavez-Garcia, 15, in an attempt to join the notoriously violent MS-13 gang. Lee Chilcote, 71 was waiting at the train station when Garcia suddenly began hitting him.
A witness who called police told reporters: “We saw that impact. And we saw him just start pouring out, right there, and he was on the ground.”

Fortunately, Chilcote survived the attack but suffered some permanent difficulties with his speech.

In June 2007, a surveillance video caught the horrific image of Jason Verador, 28 walking-up behind James McKinney, 41 and striking him in the back of the head with a baseball bat. McKinney, who was mentally disabled, died a few days after the attack.

That attack gained national attention both for the sickening nature in which Verador behaved after wards, as well as the evidence it provided to this nation's growing gang violence, mainly fueled by illegal immigration.

Perhaps, nearly as disturbing as the brutal attack on William and Cynthia Bennett was the lack of information coming out of the Loudoun Sheriff’s office who is handling the case.
I phoned the sheriff’s office Tuesday night and asked for a description of the suspects. The officer on the other end of the line was extremely hesitant to talk about it, and said she “did not know.”

I told her that one article had given the description of clothing one man was wearing, but nothing else was offered. I simply wanted to know weight, height, race, etc., to place in my article…She remained silent.

I then asked the anonymous woman (she refused to give me her name), if she knew about the Bennett murder, after a very long pause, she answered with a timid “yes.”

I was then referred to their media information officer, who was not in at the time.

I do not understand how the sheriff’s office, expects the good people of Loudoun County to assist them with this case, or to even protect themselves with mad dog killers on the loose, without releasing the most basic of information about the suspects.

If someone was able to describe what a suspect was wearing (gray jogging suit and a green knit cap), they were obviously able to give a physical description.

Could it be that the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office has succumbed to political correctness and does not want to cast further suspicion on the area’s large illegal immigrant population?

Of course, Loudoun County, along with much of Northern Virginia, has been hard-hit by a wave of crimes generated by the Salvadoran gang known as MS-13.

Husband, father, veteran William Bennett may very well have been the latest American to lose his life because our politicians refuse to defend our border.