Lost in the Eulogy
Consider it a scene out of The Godfather Redux:: Mourners gather around a casket to eulogize a man who was a good man, a kind man, a man who was misled into dealing drugs and killing a drug dealer and having a shoot-out with police and later serving time in prison where he was stabbed to death by another inmate.
Hey, even drug dealers, and especially the dealers who kill them, have love.
The Los Angeles Times/Washington Post news network reports the Bronxian Larry Davis, who wounded six police officers officers in a 1986 shootout, was remembered at his funeral Wednesday as someone “misled by outside influences.”
Had he never stepped outside of his door, he would have been a law-abider.
More than 100 people attended the service at the Creston Avenue Baptist Church in the Bronx.
Davis, 41, was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the murder of a drug dealer when he was stabbed to death on Feb. 20 at Shawangunk Correctional Facility. He was remembered as a strong family man with a love of music, a victim of the New York Police Department that, somehow, turned a “strong, playful, good hearted, hardworking and an aggressive person, who showed signs of becoming a businessman at an early age” into a drug dealer and killer.
Bishop Michael L. Marcano, pastor of the church who presided over the funeral, blamed the NYPD for Davis’ entry into the drug trade: “Was Larry Davis a good person? In totality, I would say so,” Marcano said. “Has he done bad things? Sure he has, and I don’t agree with them at all.”
I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s good to hear the pastor of a church say he doesn’t agree with dealing addictives and killing your competition.
“He should be remembered as a young man who has been misled,” the bishop said, to which I would add “and a guy who could shoot well and often.”
Davis wanted to open a candy store at 15, according to the funeral program, but was lured to dealing a different kind of candy by “a few corrupt officers.” How the officers, rather than local dealers hanging out in the neighborhood, lured him into the drug trade isn’t known, but the program referred to his shootout as a “failed attempt at assassination by the NY police,” adding that “they finally achieved death” when Davis was murdered last month.
A spokesman for the NYPD would not comment Wednesday on the charges.
Davis was acquitted of the charges of trying to kill the police but was later convicted of killing another drug dealer.
Posted by Bryan McKenzie at 11:20 AM. Filed under: Daily Screed •
