Don’t let murders fade from public attention

By Steve Reinbrecht

The Reading Eagle has used a lot of ink and pixels to tell the terrible story of Ryan Stevyn Benjamin, a young teacher apparently murdered and left in a pond in Chester County.

Headlines this month said:

• Her body was found (June 1)
• Her body was identified (June 2)
• The investigation continued (June 3)
• She was ‘so full of life’ (also June 3)
• Shock and sorrow at Juniata College (June 4)
• Police were closing in (June 5)
• A fundraiser (June 7)
• Suspect sought in Chester County death (June 15)

On the other hand, the award-winning local newspaper hasn’t had anything lately about another murder of a young person – that of Saxxon Hopkins, who was 20 when he was found shot to death in an alley in Reading more than two years ago. The paper didn’t write much about his death then and has had little if anything since.

Why pay so much attention this month to the dead woman in the pond in Chester County compared to the scant attention paid the dead man found in the alley in Reading on June 1, 2014?

Was it because no one tried to hide his body, as opposed to Benjamin’s killer or killers, who cold-bloodedly rigged a cinder-block anchor to hide her body? Was it because Benjamin was a college graduate, and worked with children? Was it because Hopkins had a police record? 

Benjamin’s story is sexier, but not representative of murder in Berks County.

The Reading Eagle should vigorously follow all murders – murders! the most horrible of crimes! – no matter the circumstances of the killing or the character of the victim.

Reading doesn’t have many murders, based on state police records, far fewer than one a month:

• 2014: nine [eight by firearms], the year Hopkins died
• 2015: 13 [11 by firearms]
• 2016: one so far

Hopkins’ grandfather James Hopkins died in November. From his obit, it seems to me he might have commented on his grandson’s death. Born in Reading in 1943, James was a Marine, worked for 43 years at a local company and had two sons, six daughters and 18 grandchildren, including Saxxon Hopkins.

As a member of a family like that, Saxxon Hopkin’s unsolved death must still be reverberating.

To get to the truth, the Reading Eagle should give every victim the attention he or she deserves. To treat this young man’s death as non-news is shameful.

Besides a young person dying a violent death, it’s hard to think of an event that causes more shock, grief and pain, in wide ripples. So much so that it’s a public event.

I want to try to understand how a Exeter High School graduate was shot to death on a neighborhood street.

Reading Police Sgt. Jacqueline Flanagan told me Thursday, June 23, that police are investigating Hopkins’ death and had nothing new to report.