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Courtesy photo/WESH-TV. Lloyd Robinson Jr. was shot through a front glass door and killed in his Daytona Beach home early Monday, a story that is sad news to all who live in Volusia County.
Though the focus here at NSBNEWS.net is on greater New Smyrna Beach and its daily news cycle, even as we have a homicide of our own involving a 25-year-old man shot to death, I can't stop thinking about the 13-year-old Daytona Beach boy shot in the face and killed -- just like that -- when he answered the door to murderers seemingly intent on killing his father.
As Police Chief Mike Chitwood told the Central Florida media outlet, this was no random act of violence. And the father, the boy's namesake, is no angel.
The target was clear -- but the wrong person appeared inside the front door at 4 in the morning yesterday.
A woman pounded on the door and then a gunman fired the weapon.
The boy got there first: BOOM!
And just like that, the life of a child, was taken away.
A life was taken in Volusia County, a young life where a child -- like so many in broken homes -- went back and forth between parents. In this case, between Georgia and Florida.
That boy was Lloyd Robinson Jr., named after his father, Lloyd Robinson Sr., and even as his son lay at the hospital, he has not cooperated with the cops, according to Chitwood.
Perhaps that child would still be alive if he hasn't seen his father. Even as I write this blog, I struggle with whether I have that right to make judgments, but look at the end result.
This is not about economics, or educating or even parenting itself, as much as taking responsibility to make sure as a parent to live a life that reflects positively on a child. Translation: Being a positive role model to one's child.
According to police and media reports, the father was twice imprisoned for attempted lewd behavior involving a minor and possessing drugs and a firearm by a convicted felon.
So should it come as a surprise that gun violence would come to his home in the middle of the night?
There's a phrase in the Bible (Galations 6): "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
As has been simply but aptly translated through the generations of mankind: "You reap what you sow."
Lloyd Robinson Jr., never had a chance at the potential to reap goodness, despite the ugliness around him, the evils that caught up with his father, who even in his anguish is slow to come clean, if he will at all.
The murder of a child was committed. The father, who has sewn a life of crime, now has his son's blood on his hands as long as he doesn't cooperate with the police.
Editor's Note: Headline changed to correctly reflect "sow" instead of "sew."