We have previously noted that the vast majority of homicide victims in Philadelphia are black, but when one black gang banger kills another black gang banger, it isn’t really news anymore, not to the Inquirer. Instead, the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s four separate stories; how many do the mostly black victims get?

Well, now it’s story number five:

Bucks County hunter sentenced to 7 to 20 years in prison for fatally shooting teen at state park

Kenneth Heller told a judge Wednesday that he thought he was aiming at a groundhog last October.

by Vinny Vella | July 7, 2021



Jason Kutt. Photo provided to The Philadelphia Inquirer by Bucks County District Attorney. Click to enlarge.

Profusely apologizing for his actions, a Bucks County hunter was sentenced to seven to 20 years in state prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the accidental shooting death of a teenager at Nockamixon State Park last fall.

Kenneth Heller, 52, of Warminster, told Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey L. Finley he thought he was aiming his .17-caliber rifle at a groundhog on Oct. 24. Days later, after District Attorney Matthew Weintraub held a news conference asking the public for information about the case, Heller learned he had killed Jason Kutt, 18, who was taking in an early fall sunset with his girlfriend on a bank of Lake Nockamixon.

“I would rather it was me that died that day than Jason,” Heller said in the courtroom, addressing more than 30 of Kutt’s friends, relatives, and supporters in attendance. “I can’t wake up from this nightmare, and I don’t think I ever will.”

Finley said he did not doubt that Heller was remorseful. But he admonished the longtime hunter, saying he seemingly was thinking more about himself than the grieving family after word of Kutt’s death spread.

“Not only did you know what you had done, you knew the trauma you inflicted on this family, and you knew the community was in fear of a murderer running amok in Nockamixon Park,” Finley said. “Your panic turned into selfishness and self-preservation.”

There’s more at the original.

Yes, Mr Heller did try to avoid prison. He started getting rid of his hunting gear, though he failed to get rid of the rifle with which he killed Mr Kutt. He wasn’t a hardened criminal, though he’s now a convicted felon.

I admit to being less interested in Mr Heller’s conviction than I am in the story. Most of the dead black guys in Philadelphia don’t get more than a couple of paragraphs written about them. It seems that the only stories the paper publishes are small police blotter reports, usually not on the website main page, unless the victim is an innocent, like Christine Lupo, a “somebody,” like a local high school basketball player, or a cute little white girl, like the 2,782 site search results for Rian Thal. Even the Inquirer’s own columnist, Helen Uniñas wrote that, for the vast majority of murder victims in the city:

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

The very white Mr Kutt has now been remembered five times in the Inquirer, complete with his photo. I certainly do not begrudge the stories written about him, but I have to ask, is the Inquirer the “anti-racist news organization” that publisher Elizabeth Hughes said it was trying to become?

Why doesn’t Inquirer Senior Vice President and Editor Gabriel Escobar assign reporters to track down the stories about the hundreds of people, primarily teenaged and twenty-something black males, killed in the City of Brotherly Love? Yeah, we already know: the majority of the 287 souls sent early to their eternal rewards as of 11:59 PM EDT on July 7^th[1]287 ÷ 188 days in the year, = 1.5266 homicides per day, for a projected 557 for the year. were ‘nobodies,’ gang bangers or wannabes who were killed before they killed someone themselves, but aren’t those stories in themselves? Was the life of young Mr Kutt really that much more important than that of the mostly unnamed men and women spilling out their life’s blood on the city’s mean streets? Most of them weren’t 6’5″ forwards for Simon Gratz High School, a leader on the city’s 2019 6A title, but were their lives really worth nothing? Even in death, a young black gang banger’s life can have some lesson for those growing up and somehow idealizing, or fearing, the thug lifestyle. If only Mr Escobar would actually send out a reporter or three to investigate.

Then again, perhaps the Editor knows too much already, and doesn’t want to send a reporter out into what could be a life-threatening situation. But, that too, would be a story that ought to be told.