Re “Obama Faulted for Inaction Following Murder at the Guard Armory”
Five years ago this late afternoon, JoAnn Crystal Harris, six months pregnant, a young woman so little known initially that she erroneously was described as homeless and of uncertain name, was bludgeoned to death at the National Guard Armory by a Guard veteran, Sgt. Scott Ansman, now serving a life sentence in Northern California.
Aroused to supra-human heights of anger as he chased her about the Armory with an assortment of instruments, the married military man, who had just become a father again, seemed to think he was the father of Ms. Harris’s unborn child, enraging him.
By 4:15, however, he had calmed so extremely that he telephoned police, told them what had happened, and, bizarrely, awaited their arrival.
He was 35, a family man, with his two-month-old baby making three children. She was 29, never married, and carrying a child that was not Mr. Ansman’s.
Having dated occasionally, this was to be a happy occasion. They were to buy a car for Ms. Harris.
On that bloody afternoon, just as on this serene afternoon, Fiesta La Ballona was starting scant yards away in an adjacent section of Vets Park.
The case was not finally closed until this year when the Harris-Bennett family, led by the only son, Gerald, reached an undisclosed settlement in a civil suit against the state of California.
A month ago, Mr. Bennett, still fuming over the circumstances leading up to his sister’s murder amidst numerous warning signals that largely went unheeded, blamed President Obama for not asserting strong enough action against the National Guard and allegedly liable parties.
It burns Mr. Bennett that Guardsmen whom he holds responsible for allegedly enabling Ms. Harris’s tragedy were promoted while Guard veteran Erik Hein, seen as a hero by Mr. Bennett, was demoted.
“There were 15 on one side, and the one officer who could have helped my sister, who blew the whistle on this entire mess, was punished. He was demoted. His wife ended up dead. He is the black sheep of the whole situation.
“But the individual who got the hit man, who encouraged the whole crime, he got promoted. All of those officers who could have stopped it, they got promoted,” Mr. Bennett said.
