The Lexington Herald-Leader reported on Tuesday, January 5^th, on the 2020 homicide numbers in Kentucky’s second largest city, home of the University of Kentucky, and where I lived from August of 1971 through December of 1984. There were 34 homicides in the city in 2020, up from 30 in 2019, which was the previous record. With a guesstimated population of 323,152 in mid-2019, that puts the city’s murder rate at 10.53 per 100,000 population, far, far behind places like Philadelphia and Chicago. Lexington-Fayette County is the 60^th largest city in the United States, larger than St Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.

Well, it seems as though the city’s gang-bangers took that number as a personal challenge, and one to be left in the dust.

Man dead, suspect arrested after Lexington’s 2nd fatal shooting in hours

By Jeremy Chisenhall | April 19, 2021 | 7:22 AM, Updated 3:28 PM EDT

Brandon Carl Munford, 37 (Photo: Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center)

A 28-year-old man is dead after a fatal shooting in Lexington Sunday evening, according to Lexington police and the Fayette County coroner’s office.

The shooting was called into police at 7:09 p.m. Sunday, according to police Lt. Chris Van Brackel. Officers responded to the 1000 block of Pennebaker Drive to find Devante Bell injured after being shot. He was transported to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital but later died, according to the coroner’s office.

Brandon Carl Munford, 37, was arrested Sunday night and charged with murder and wanton endangerment, according to an arrest citation. A Lexington officer wrote in the arrest citation that Munford intentionally shot Bell, who was inside his vehicle at the time. Police later released that the shooting happened when an argument escalated to the point of shots being fired.

At least the Lexington Herald-Leader actually reported on the killings, unlike The Philadelphia Inquirer, which no longer sees stories about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as newsworthy, unless the victim is a child, a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl.

The photo used to illustrate the Herald-Leader article was not in the newspaper’s story. Other Lexington media, including WKYT-TV, WLEX-TV, the Lexington city government page, and WDKY-TV carried the photo. The Lexington Police department tweeted it out. The Herald-Leader instead ran a stock photo of Lexington police car pursuit lights. The newspaper has apparently decided against publishing the photos of accused criminals, for some unknown reason.

Further down came the kicker:

Bell’s death was also the fifth Lexington homicide in April and the 15th homicide in 2021. Lexington set a record for homicides in 2020 with 34.

Sunday, April 18^th, was the 108^th day of 2021. At that rate, 0.1389 homicides per day, Lexington is on track for 51 murders in 2021! Fifteen homicides on the 108^th day of the year is fully half of 2019’s total of 30, less than a third of the way through the year. Doing the math, Lexington is on pace for a year end homicide rate of 15.78 per 100,000 population, which still pales in comparison to Philadelphia or Chicago or St Louis, but the increase is certainly a disturbing trend, in a city with far lower population density, with far fewer people stacked on top of each other.

Of course, the Herald-Leader article uses the journalistically (journolistically?) favored term “gun violence,” as though inanimate objects magically jump into people’s hands and then fire themselves:

The increase in gun violence in Lexington has caused concern from BUILD (Building a United Interfaith Lexington through Direct-Action), a faith-based group made up of 26 member congregations in Lexington. The group addresses issues of poverty and injustice locally. Members from the group are hosting a “Stop the Violence” rally Tuesday evening.

“As Pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, I see that Lexington has a violence problem,” said Pastor Joseph Owens, a co-chair of BUILD. “This isn’t new. We have gangs. I have presided over the funerals of several young men who were shot and killed in Lexington over the last few years. My fellow clergy from around the city have also presided or attended some of these funerals.

At least the Rev Owens mentioned gangs, mentioned “a violence problem” rather than “a gun violence problem.” The problem isn’t guns; the problem is bad people, mostly bad younger people, reared by mostly bad parents. Of course, it’s quite politically incorrect to say that, because, well just because.