Names changed –
Just hours before Todd McShane died, Mr. Dwight had a talk with him. Mr. Dwight was Todd's grandfather.
"I hadn't seen him in a while," he tells me, "and I wanted to find out how he was doing. I had heard that he wasn't doing the right thing."
Still, Todd, 17, was on track to graduate from high school in a month, and he assured his grandfather that all was okay. What else could the grandfather do?
That evening Mr. Dwight got the call. He was in East Oakland, dropping his wife off at 73rd. It was 7:30 and Todd's father was on the phone. Over on 64th Street, Todd was lying dead from a bullet wound. Quickly, Mr. Dwight drove the few blocks to see his grandson a second time that day, but he couldn't get close. Todd was now evidence, Todd was off limits. They didn't move the body until midnight. He would see his grandson again two days later at the funeral home, then not again for another two weeks.
In California, there is financial help for victims of violent crime, from the California Victims Compensation Program, or Cal-VCP. In Alameda county, victims apply for that compensation at the Victim/Witness Assistance Division of the DA's office. There you fill out the forms and there your eligibility is determined.
Because the police said Todd had a gun when he was killed, because allegedly he shot, not mortally, his own killer, because in the words of the rules of the California Victims Compensation Program, a victim is ineligible if he has "participated in or been involved in the crime" (sometimes it reads "contributed to the circumstances of his death"), Todd's family was denied the emergency funds available to most homicide survivors to pay for a timely funeral. No trial, no hearing, there is no due process for the dead.
"It was a very stressful time," says Mr. Dwight.
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