Category: default || By jt3y

The song "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" by Cannonball Adderley came on the radio as I started this Almanac. That somehow seems appropriate.

The young man who died yesterday when the car he was driving slammed into DiSalla's Pizza in Munhall Junction apparently had an older brother who was shot to death in Mon Vue Heights last year.

According to the Post-Gazette, Homestead police spotted a car going the wrong way down a one-way street just after 12 a.m. Monday. When they tried to stop it, the car fled and the police pursued. A few minutes later, the car crashed into the wall of DiSalla's, narrowly missing one of the customers and critically injuring the driver, identified as Terrance Raiford, 17, of West Mifflin.

Raiford died last night at UPMC Presbyterian hospital.

Last year, Raiford's brother Eric Martin, 20, a specialist in the Army National Guard who was home on leave from Iraq, was shot in the back in Mon Vue Heights in what police called a "senseless, cold-blooded" killing. A 19-year-old McKees Rocks man was charged with homicide in connection with the slaying, but no motive --- if any --- has been revealed.

Martin, a former star tight-end on the West Mifflin High School football team, left behind a one-month-old girl. Now his mother and stepfather have another tragedy to cope with --- another son has died senselessly. KDKA reports that two loaded handguns were found in the car. If that's true, it explains why Raiford ran; otherwise, driving the wrong way down a one-way street is at worst a $25 fine.

There's no moral to this story, just despair that 17-year-olds are dying in car crashes after police chases, and that 20-year-old Iraq war veterans are being gunned down in the street for no apparent reason.

If you're a praying person, say a prayer for the Raifords. Say a prayer for the community.

Mercy, mercy, mercy.