Marcellus Andrews slaying: new details emerge

Note: to read all AKSARBENT posts on this story, click on the "Labels" entry at the bottom of this post.

Kyle Munson, of the Des Moines Register, has written an unusually penetrating account of the aftermath of the beating death of Marcellus Andrews of Waterloo, asking questions that clarify a lot of murky but pertinent details that almost every other news account has either ignored or not followed up on.
     AKSARBENT, of course, has abbreviated and paraphrased and inserted its own opinion in brackets, so click on the above link to read Mr. Munson's perceptive, nuanced and intelligent recounting of this story up to now, not just AKSARBENT's crude bullet points.

• Police have stressed they think the beating was prompted by a long-running dispute. [Yet they repeatedly have been unwilling to acknowledge that Andrews was on one side or another of said dispute. But they point to the long running "dispute" as the reason for Andrews' killing, not his perceived sexual orientation.]
• Andrews wasn’t part of alleged vandalism to a car last week that preceded the Cottage Street confrontation in the early hours of Aug. 19, [Lt. Michael McNamee now says, unambiguously.]
• Andrews happened to be sitting on the porch of his friend Nakita Wright’s home when he was accosted. (McNamee said there seems to have been a former romantic tie between one of the attackers and one of Andrews’ female friends.)
• McNamee reiterated his claim that Andrews’ sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation had “nothing to do with the incident itself.”
• Andrews’ family and friends thus far have chosen not to speak directly about his sexual orientation.
• The pastor who will conduct Andrews’ funeral Saturday, the Rev. Marvin Jenkins of Union Missionary Baptist Church, has said that homosexuality is “not acceptable to God.”
• Local DJs on African-American community radio station KBBG-FM 88.1 — which began broadcasting 35 years ago on Cottage Street — characterized Andrews’ death as “a clarion call to come together” and “a wake-up call for our children.”
• McNamee characterized it as a “fairly quiet summer” for police before Andrews’ death. Some black community leaders agree that violence has been curtailed compared with just a couple of years ago.
• Seven years ago, Thyanna Parsons, 23, also was a captain of the Crusaders when she was an innocent bystander killed in the middle of a gang shooting.
• Andrews was an organ donor, and his kidneys, liver, heart and eyes will go to other people.