Local media drops ball on Mission Bend home invasion

Sadly, there's been another violent criminal incident in the Mission Bend area, this time a home invasion that involved the shooting of a pastor and his wife.

Inexplicably, local media outlets continue to shy away from providing meaningful descriptions of the suspects.

Chronicle reporter Mike Glenn offers this information:

The attack follows a rash of violent incidents in the Mission Bend area, including six driveway robberies last month. Investigators said the description of the two suspects, age 17 to 20, seems to match.

"That's the only thing we have to compare," Pair said. "We don't know at this point whether it's going to be connected to the driveway robberies or not."

Logically, what might one expect to find next? Yes, the descriptions of the suspects! Except that doesn't come next. There is no description of the suspects in the story. Incidentally, Mike Glenn is the reporter whose initial coverage of the recent $AFEclear-related fatality also omitted important details.

Local television coverage is no better.

KHOU-11 reports:

People in the Mission Bend subdivision have been on guard for a while. There have been more than 30 driveway robberies in the area within the last year, including six in the last month. The suspects in all of them match the ones from Wednesday's home invasion as well as the getaway vehicle, a small dark colored car.

There is no further description in the story.

KPRC-2 reports:

The gunmen, described as 17 to 19 years old, escaped in a blue or black compact car.

That's the extent of the description.

KTRK-13 offers no description of the suspects, but gives this titillating information:

Detectives are going through the evidence in the house. There is reportedly a lot of blood.

Entirely too much blood. A description of the suspects sure might be useful to Mission Bend citizens hoping to avoid more bloodshed.

Local media aren't doing their jobs when they decline to report detailed descriptions of suspects, especially given the crime wave that's hit the Mission Bend area of late. Certainly, one can understand that television spot-news reporting at crime scenes may not have detailed information initially, but that information ought eventually to be provided (especially when the television outlet has a website). And there's no excuse for the city's only newspaper to omit such important details.

UPDATE: Careful reader Rob Booth points out that the race of the suspects is mentioned in a quote in paragraph three of the Chronicle story, and he says that KTRK did not mention that detail in its reporting last night. That's still not very descriptive.

UPDATE 2: Banjo Jones shares his thoughts on why descriptive details were omitted.

UPDATE 3 (02-04-2005): The Chronicle has posted composite sketches of the suspects, finally.

Composite sketch 1 Composite sketch 2

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/03/05 08:51 AM | Print |

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