DARON Dylan Wint, the suspect in the torture and killing of a D.C. family and their housekeeper, had a long history of assaults, according to The Washington Post. He is a black immigrant from Guyana who joined the Marines briefly but was expelled and was apparently employed as a certified welder. He was arrested for stabbing a man in Syracuse in 2006, allegedly made violent threats to numerous other people and in 2010 police found him behind a gas station near D.C. with a machete and a pellet gun. He was so threatening that his own father petitioned for, and was granted, a restraining order against him.

President Obama was so moved by the seemingly unintentional death of a drug dealer from Baltimore a  few weeks ago that he made a public statement of sympathy to Gray’s family, expressed moral outrage over his death and promised to introduce federal programs to prevent the same kind of thing from happening again. He has made no statement on this grisly mass murder not far from the White House, even though it apparently included the torture of a ten-year-old boy. We can assume there will be no mass-produced T-shirts with the face of Phillip Savopoulos. Yet Obama’s words regarding Freddie Gray — “This is not new and we shouldn’t pretend that it’s new” — apply well to this case.

Phillip Savopolous

There are numerous ways in which Wint’s story violates the script read by Obama. Wint willingly moved here from Guyana. His parents had a successful life and a house in the suburbs. He not only found a job but was given a chance to join the Marines. Moreover, if anything he was the beneficiary of police and court leniency, not overzealous prosecution.

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