Don’t forget Tionda and Diamond Bradley
By Chinta Strausberg
In just six-days, it will have been 11-years since Tionda Z. Bradley, then 10, and her sister, Diamond Yvette Bradley, then 3, were reported missing.
Every year their family members hold a press conference around 35th and Cottage Grove where the girls lived when they disappeared. There will be prayers and pleas for their return.
But, I’ve always wondered how could two beautiful girls like the Bradley sisters simply disappear from the face of the earth and no one knows anything about this case.
Every year, police draw an age enhanced photo of the girls, and every year I pray someone will see them and they will be returned safely home to their mother.
I will pray for them again this year and hope this year, 2012, will be the special year they will run into their mother’s arms. I still have hope, hope that someone who knows something about this case will come forth and give police the information they need to find the girls and close this cold case for good.
I keep hoping and praying. That’s all I have. I keep hoping and praying that the killing of our children will end, too. There have been about 109 children killed since last year. I keep hoping and praying that the Bradley sisters are alive somewhere, and I keep praying and hoping that peace will prevail in Chicago and that the senseless bloodletting in our communities will end.
As a news reporter, I couldn’t, I can’t, I must not get too close with my subjects, but I am also human, too. Yet, besides writing stories that call for peace to prevail in our communities, all I have is a prayer and a hope that the killing, the shootings, the maiming and the kidnappings end.
What has happened to us as a people that in 2012 it is so easy to pick up a gun and take another human beings life? What has created these monsters, these cowards including child murderers?
And, what has happened to people who know the identities of those who are and have violated our children yet maintain the senseless code of conduct that only gives cover for killers to murder over and over again?
May 2012 be the beginning of the healing this city, this nation needs to end the domestic war that is taking the lives of so many Americans moreso than those of our brave men and women who are killed defending our country. Let there be peace in 2012. Let the healing begin now.
Chinta Strausberg is a Journalist of more than 33-years, a former political reporter and a current PCC Network talk show host. You can e-mail Strausberg at: Chintabernie@aol.com.
