Sick and Senseless

Store owner Mike Dayem was murdered a block from our old house by an neighborhood waste-case with multiple priors named Bobby King who wanted to buy alcohol a week ago Sunday. So basically Mike paid the ultimate price for courageously upholding the law.

I used to chat with this guy, he was really friendly. You could tell he was a good man. We used to run over to the store to get a bottle of hot sauce or beer or bread. I bought a great phone card from him back in the dial-up modem days of 1999 when he had just opened the store.

He put up with a lot of crap. The drug peddling idiots used to hang out in his parking lot, riding their little sisters' 20-inch bikes around, waiting for clientele coming off I-71 or I-480. A lot of the stores in that neighborhood were what I call "front operations", and we'd rejoice every time we heard they went out of business or lost their liquor license which happened fairly regularly. But under Mike's ownership, JJ's was a legitimate business. You could just tell.

This is utterly tragic and I pray for Mike and his family. Secondarily, I hope the business remains in or falls into good hands to prevent the further disintegration of the West 130th neighborhood. Last but not least, I hope Bobby King gets a life sentence for this horrible, brutal and senseless crime.