Why Didn't This Get More Publicity?

The story goes something like this -- WWE match featuring "Big Show," a 400-plus-pound rassler known for bad temperament.  Match is in a steel cage.  Young child gets out of his mother's sight, somehow gets into the cage.  The rassler is all pumped up; the fear is that he will body slam the little boy.  Ring security shoots the rassler and kills him. 


The headlines made it seem matter-of-fact, that this shooting was justified because the rassler had a history of instability and could have killed the little boy.  The natural selection crowd, a distinct but vocal minority, decried the shooting, but not because both lives were worth saving.  No, some of these folks argued that the kid got in there and, yes, he could have been hurt, but that nature should have taken its course without the shooting, which meant that if the handlers couldn't have convinced Big Show not to body slam or otherwise hurt the little boy and the boy got hurt or killed, well, that was supposed to happen because the inattentive mom put her son in that position and sometimes that is life.


I don't agree with the latter position; all that needed to be done should have been done to save the boy from harm and ultimately the rassler from harm too.  That said, I wasn't there and don't know whether the shooting was justified or not.  But, when I read the article, I felt that those who let it get to press should have been a little more demonstrative about the tragedy of the whole thing and whether in this type of a situation the shooting was justified -- and without going to the natural selection crowd, a few of whom were wont to argue that if anyone should have gotten hurt it was the little boy's mother for letting him out of sight in the first place. 


But a fatal shooting because a little boy got into a steel cage?  That never should have happened.  The little boy should not have gotten close to the ring or the cage or whatever, and the entrance to the cage should have hard a guard near it so that no one from the audience could have gotten in.  You go to a professional wrestling match, you expect to see all sorts of drama and hijinx, but not anyone shooting a real gun with real bulets at one of the contestants.  No, not ever.


So Big Show is gone, dead, because of something that got way out of hand and should not have happened.  The world shrugged, perhaps because the guy was a giant, perhaps because he topped 400 pounds, perhaps because he had a history of some erratic behavior. 


The indifference is hard to take.  No one deserves that fate.