An Article Never Published about a Tragedy Eerily Similar to the Chiefs

[Abe Sargent]

Hello folks. As I mentioned in the thread with the Chiefs issues, i had encountered a situation where someone I knew had been involved in a similar situation. It happened in 2006 but I didn;t find out until 2008. I wrote an article about it for StarCityGames but knew they would not publish it, but sent it anyway, and of course, it was rejected. I was moving some files tonight to a new external hard drive i picked up, and I came across it. With the KC story so recent, I thought I would send it here in a cut and paste. Take a look, and let me know what you think

[Abe Sargent]

The Kitchen Table #248? - This Article Has Nothing to Do With Magic


Good morning folks and welcome back to the Kitchen Table. This is not a typical article. It has nothing to do with Magic. Unlike my article, Revelations, there is no way to get Magic into the article.

As such, I do not really expect to see SCG publish it. After all, publishing this article is not going to sell a card. Nothing in this article will impact tournaments, or add any entries into the deck database. This article will answer no rules questions nor will it provide details of a fun new format.

Today this article is about life, and anticipating it will go unpublished, I have even submitted a second Magic article along with it, so SCG can publish their normal Magic article, and reject this one, sending it back to my laptop in obscurity. I am simply writing this in order to get it out of my system, it’s cathartic for me.


What topic has pushed me to write about it today? What has happened that I write this instead of a Magic article?

Allow me to begin by telling you a story about my past.

I grew up in southern West Virginia, in a small coal mining town of 300 or so, nestled along the Coal River as it winds its way through the coalfields of Appalachia. (There are some who pronounce this App-uh-LAY-shuh, but I prefer App-uh-LACH-uh). There was no stop light for a half hour in any direction (actually Marmet’s was more like 25 minutes away, but you get the idea.)

I once told my staff at Eastern Michigan University that West Virginia has the lowest crime rate in the nation, to which they responded, “Of course it does, it doesn’t have a lot of people, and they are all spread out.”

Actually, WV is 37th in population, so if a small population led to a low crime rate, then 13 states would have a lower crime rate than WV. Also, WV is not spread out, like people think. Because the state is in the mountains, everything is built in the valleys, along the rivers in the flatter areas. As such, there is no wasted space in WV, as house butts up against house along the roads and creeks and rivers. My biggest adjustment in moving to Michigan was not the lack of mountains, but the waste of space.

Plus this statistic is crime rate, not pure crime. If a city of 1,000,000 has double the amount of crime than a city of 100,000, then it has a drastically lower crime rate, and the citizens there can feel safer. WV has had the lowest crime rate in America for decades. This will become important later.

I was born the son of a Baptist minister, and as such, I spent a lot of my time in church and church related activities. One summer, before my Junior year in high school, the director of a week-long family camp asked my father to come up to the camp and be one of the teachers. My father agreed, and so we went to the state’s American Baptist camp in Cowen, and joined the family camp.

Some families come to the Family Camp, and this is their first time there, and others are long time participants in the annual camp. Once such family was the Turleys, who had been coming to family camp for years. This was our first time at Family Camp.

The Turleys were good West Virginia people, and if you know West Virginia, then that statement is enough to tell you about them. Christian, hard-working, honest, ethical people. Our family and theirs ate a few meals together. They had four kids, if memory serves me right, and one was a son in junior high, and him and I hung out a few times. They also had a daughter, Lara, who was going into high school, 9th grade if my memory again agrees with me.

Each day, we broke up into smaller groups for Bible Study, divided largely by age. Lara and I were in the same group for high schoolers along with a few other kids. This is where I first met Lara Turley.

During the week, we grew close. We flirted, in that innocent Christian high school way. We hung out a few times. Twice we both escaped our cabins after lights out and walked to the gate of the camp and back in the cool full moon. We never did anything more than that. No kissing, no holding hands, no proclamation of mutual affection, nothing.

Camp ended, as it always does, and families move on.

That year I was on the State Youth Committee, a group of teens that planned the major American Baptist Youth events for the state. As such, I was very active, and I saw Lara once or twice at various events around the state, and said hello.

My senior year, I was the chair of the Nominating Committee. As such, we interview volunteers that wanted to be on the State Youth Committee the following year, and then chose who we believed were called to be on the SYC.

While chairing the committee, Lara applied to be on the SYC, and after the committee’s consideration, they selected her as one of the incoming members. As such, we again renewed our acquaintances there, and later at an event where we installed the new members of the SYC. After that, I graduated from high school a couple of months later, headed off to Morgantown to go to West Virginia University, and Lara and I never spoke again.

In West Virginia, I have a ton of acquaintances and friends. The people are so friendly and open, that you simply acquire new friends often on a daily basis. Lara and I had our two paths, and for a brief moment those paths intersected before splitting off again.

This past weekend, I was on myspace. I have a page I maintain largely for current friends, former staff I’ve supervised, and old West Virginia friends from high school, junior high, college, and my Baptist life there. There are a few folks, like Evan Erwin, that do not meet any of those categories, but that’s mostly who’s who on my page.

While on myspace, I was racking my brain trying to think of people I could search up, and add to my friends. Now, of course not everyone is on myspace. Some are on other websites, like Facebook. Others aren’t on any of these webpages. I type in a person‘s name, and then search for them. If I can’t find them, then I move on.

However, there is an issue with women’s names. There is a chance that they have gotten married since I knew them, and then registered their married name, instead of their birth name. Therefore, whenever I fail to get a hit on a woman’s name, I look her up in google, to see if I can find a wedding announcement or some such. Then I can get her current name and look it up. I have found two people this way that I would have otherwise missed.

I remembered my short time and friendship with Lara Turley, so I looked her up, and unable to find her, I did a web search, with her name in quotes.

This is what brings me to today‘s article. I had to read a lot of newspaper articles in order to put the pieces of Lara’s life back together. Each article revealed another piece, and I will provide to you a paragraph detailing Lara’s life until October, 2006.

She graduated from high school in Milton, and then went to Judson College. There were two Judson Colleges at the time, but my guess is she went to the one in Illinois, named after the first American Baptist missionary, and now called by Judson University. While at Judson, Lara majored in music, and was part of a choir that toured in South America and Europe.

I may have some of the next events in the wrong order, because of the inexactness of journalism. I never found a timeline or anything, and had to reconstruct these events myself.

She graduated from Judson, and became a teacher briefly. She married Jason Carder, and changed her name to Lara Carder. They had a son who was fifteen months old in October. At some point in time, they became estranged. She filed a protective order against Jason for domestic violence. He was forced out of the house. A month later, she was on a plane arriving in Charleston, and sat beside a stranger named Robert Shockley, a husband and father, 38 years old, from California who was arriving to Charleston to go to a business convention. Divorce papers were filed for the Carders.

About a month after Jason Carder was forced out of his home, he showed up and went inside, awaiting the arrival of Lara Carder. Lara came home with their son and Robert Shockley. Jason Carder shot and killed Robert Shockley in the house, and Lara ran out of the house. Jason followed and shot once, missing her. Witnesses flew to the window and saw her drop to her knees, but whether to beg or pray they could not say. Jason approached and shot her in the back of the head, wounding her severely. He then went back inside the house. A responding officer arrived soon thereafter, and pulled the son out of the high chair, just as Jason turned the gun on himself and ended his life.

Lara died the following morning from her injury.

This past weekend, I found out about this, despite it happening two years ago.

Now, death is a natural part of my life. I have had people close to me die on several occasions. While a young child, my Uncle Cecil, who was not my true uncle, died. He was probably my favorite person outside of my immediate family. In eighth grade, on a cold October morning, my mother passed away from heart complications due to Huntington’s Disease. People will tell you that I wept for my mother’s passing, but it did not bother me overly much. I was not obsessed with her death or anything like that.

I’ve seen young people and old die alike. I accept death. Some deaths are due to disease or cancer, others to misfortune such as an accident. I’ve only shed tears twice for a celebrity that passed away. I shed a tear last week for Gene Upshaw’s passing, and a few years ago, when Fred Roger’s died, I almost had to take a day off from work, I was so thrown. (Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was an educational and ethical foundation of my life).

Never have I been thrown like I was when I found out about Lara’s death. It’s so savage, so unneeded. I know that sin is a consequence of free will. When someone can choose what to do with their life, sometimes people will choose poorly, and Lara’s death is a consequence of Jason’s sinful decision. Perhaps part of the reason I was so thrown is that things like this in West Virginia are rare. We are not a state, a people, with overly violent tendencies. We may be among the poorest states in the nation (#48 in terms of wealth), but poverty has never been an excuse for crime.

I found a picture of her along with a bio on a state government webpage, since she had gotten a job with them. I stared at it for about a half hour, studying every line, wrinkle. I kept trying to picture the Lara I knew with the picture of the woman in front of me.

I find myself with so many questions. When did Lara and Jason meet? Where they high school sweethearts who managed to stay together and get married despite a long distance relationship? Perhaps they met at college, and moved back to her home in Milton. Or, maybe they only started a relationship once she got back home, and married thereafter.

I know from my many trainings that a lot of women with negative self esteem are drawn into a relationship with an abusive spouse, but this is not always the case. Had Jason been abusive before they were married? How long had this been going on? Was there anything in Lara that I noticed that might have suggested she might have ended up an abusive spouse?

Some questions are better left unanswered. What was Robert Shockley, a conventioneer from California, with his own wife and kid, doing with Lara in Milton? There are many possibilities, and unfortunately, many suspicions, and there always will be.

I found one blog by a close friend who said he was not aware of any time that Jason had hit Lara, but she had filed the complaint after he held her down against her will. The blog goes on to say that Robert was there because Lara was driving him somewhere he wanted to go. I find it heartwarming to think that there may have been a reason for Robert and Lara being together other than for sinister reasons, but I doubt anybody really knows, other than those who are dead, and God. Suspicions will always remain.

I have to wonder. Was it possible for me to have changed Lara’s life for the better? She obviously wanted more than late night walks during church camp. I could have begun a relationship with her, that was admittedly long distance, but who knows how long it could have last? She was cute, and a good person, and a Christian. There was no reason not to pursue a relationship with her, only that wasn‘t what I was interested in at the time. I had already had two long distance relationships by then, and I preferred to away from a third.

What if we had started going out? Would it have helped to have given Lara the experience she needed in order to know that Jason was beneath her? Perhaps we would have been dating when she met Jason, so they would never have started dating. Or, more likely, perhaps nothing would have changed at all.

In life, we make choices. Sometimes a thousand a day. We are going to make some poorly, but we are bound by the ethical consequences of our actions. If I choose to harm another, than I am responsible for that harm.

It is at times like that that I realize just how inextricably bound we are to one another. It is as if we are all on a small island, and eventually, sooner or later, everybody will do something that will affect another. And with the growing impact of cyberspace into our lives, the island is becoming smaller and smaller.

Next week I am going to be the best man at Aaron‘s wedding. I’ve talked about Aaron a few times in my articles, and sometimes I’ve even mentioned him by name. He met his soon-to-be wife on the internet. This is becoming the norm. With myspace, and dating sites and facebook and IM and texting and forums and websites that post articles, and blogging and more; we are becoming closer and closer to each other.

My altered decisions might have resulted in Lara being alive today. Perhaps not. Probably not. But perhaps. For the last two days it’s like I’ve been walking through a daze, and tears occasionally drop from my eyes. I didn’t know this woman very well, who died almost two years ago, and here I am crying and writing an article about it. No death has floored me like this one has.

I just stare at her picture. I don’t feel affection. I just feel….connected. If that makes any sense at all. Perhaps a writer with tragedy in his blood feels a sense of connection with another whom tragedy called.

I do not believe in fate. I believe the only plan God has for our lives is that we accept his Son as our Savior. Other than that, I believe it is God’s plan for us to live our lives as we choose, so long as we long him, and love others.

But the free will we have means we choose poorly. The consequences of that are dire. For Lara, for Jason and for Robert, they were immediate. For all of us have been the victims of another. For all of us have victimized another. None of us has clean hands. They may not have been as bloodied as Jason’s, but who among us has not acted selfishly? Who among us has not walked by when a poor person asked for a handout? Think back to the last weekend you had where you did not have a tournament, family outing or something scheduled. Did you volunteer at the local shelter or soup kitchen? I didn’t. I have been so caught up in my job searching that I have not volunteered one day since October, despite not having any job other than my writing.

None of us has clean hands.

Who knows how many Lara’s we might be able to reach? With the world growing so close together, who knows the impact we might have? And instead, if you are like me, you sit at home with your collections and play games, and mope about not finding a job (despite 67 applications for housing jobs alone, plus the others I’ve applied to), and watch HGTV or Discovery, and write articles for here and WizKids, and occasionally Scrye, and even less occasionally try a short story.

Well, I suppose you won’t be like me in the details. Still, the point stands. All of us have been Jasons in our lives. We’ve been doing things to loved ones and strangers alike that they don’t deserve. Frankly, a lot of us have been Roberts, going places we should not have been. Had Robert stayed in Charleston, where is conference was, he would not have died, and could have flown back to be with his wife and child. How many times have we done something that we know we should not have? We’ve gone outside the area we should stay in, whether that boundary is physical or ethical makes no difference. We need to come home.

And then there are times when we have all been Laras. We have been the victims of another’s ill desires. Instead of moping and complaining about how life has sent us awry, instead let us remember the times when we were not the victims, but the victimizers.

I have one piece of advice that comes to my mind unbidden from a British sitcom. We all have thoughts of doom, introspection, loneliness, and shame. But we have to get over it.

Just get up and have breakfast.

With that, I believe this article has run its course. I’ll still think about Lara. I probably will for the rest of my life. However, it’s time to move on. I have to stop writing articles about her, and looking at her picture. I have to get up, and have breakfast. Yes, perhaps I could have changed Lara’s life. Perhaps there was nothing I could have done. But how many more Lara’s are out there, right now, waiting for us?

More women go to the emergency room each year for domestic abuse than for rapes, muggings and car accidents combined. One third of all homicides are domestic violence related.

You don’t have to volunteer at a women’s shelter, but know some facts. If you’d rather help out at a soup kitchen, or a homeless shelter, or with any number of worthy non-profit programs in your community, then that is valuable too. Just do something.

Until Later,
Abe Sargent