Face of Hope: Assassinated in Arizona

By Eddie Griffin

Monday, January 10, 2011

There is no excuse for killing an innocent 9-year old child, even in a random act of violence, not even for distraught political purposes. Nothing can justify, nor rationale be given for the senseless shooting death of young Christina Taylor Green, an elementary school student, who had many dreams cut short.

The third grader wanted to be the first woman to play major league baseball. In fact, she was the only girl on the Canyon del Oro Little League baseball team. She played second base.

An All-American young girl, she loved animals, singing, dancing, and gymnastics. She was elected to the student council and begun to explore a career as a public servant “that involved helping those less fortunate than her”. She had dreams of attending Penn State.

Born on September 11, 2001, Christina was no ordinary child. She was once featured in a book called “Faces of Hope”, one of the select 50 babies born from each state, in the wake of the terroristic attack on the New York twin towers. She perished in a hail of gunfire that took the lives of five others in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday, January 15, 2011. She died, an innocent child.

The Faces of Hope was a theme designed to renew the nation’s spirit, in light of the twin towers attack in New York City. It was a theme designed to show our national resolve and prove to the world that “life goes on” in America, even as 3000 souls perished at the hand of al Qaeda. New babies were being born, we said, to comfort us of our loss.

Christina Green typifies a little girl we all knew like Shirley Temple, a wide-eyed wonder child herself. A young girl searching for courage to enter politics some day in life, Christina went to see U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She was among the throng struck by an assassin’s bullet.


Jared Lee Loughner ended all Christina’s hopes and dreams. Loughner, age 22, went to a Tucson supermarket parking lot, for the sole purpose of assassinating a U.S. Congresswoman, Democrat Gabrielle Giffords. Maybe Christina just got caught in the crossfire.

But then we must remember that we gave birth to Christina, as a Face of Hope. On the most tragic day in U.S. history, she was born. And, on an even more tragic day, her soul was taken away from this world, through a so-called random act of gun violence.

No one, but God, knows the mind of a deranged killer. And since the time that Cain killed Abel, there has been violence and murder in the world. Loughner once wrote: “No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver. No, I won't trust in God.”

God Bless America! Have we come to this? Through gun rights advocacy and incendiary politics, and no godly restraint, American has created a mutated aberrant offspring, in its own image. Guns and politics created Loughner.

(See also “Unhealthy Rhetoric” by Eddie Griffin, FW Weekly, 03/31/10)

… someone out there in the vast reaches of America was feeding on all this hateful rhetoric, and found this an opportune time to strike. There may be others (quote by Eddie Griffin after the shootings in Wichita Falls, Texas, April 2010)