Growing up in the 90’s in Arkansas meant getting the daily news from one of the local tv stations, the newspaper, or your neighbors. The paper, for us it was The Gazette the TheDemocrat Gazette, and that had a fair amount of Little Rock stories, Razorback and state HS sports happenings, and then some of the national news too. For my family, we got the paper, but for the most part it was the news shows in the morning and night that let us know what was up.
Anyyyway….it took me till I was about 25 and had since lived in two other states for me to realize it is not normal to hear about homocides every night on the local news. Folks were shot in drive by’s, robberies, parking lots, and it was so regular I didn’t see the city as violent. But apparently that wasn’t and isn’t the case for a ton of folks. Talking about these kinda crimes and looking into how they were/are handled helps kinda play the tape all the way thru. Helps recognize this stuff happens, a lot in the state of Arkansas, and it’s tough to grow up or live in that reality. A lot of towns in the state don’t have that danger element cuz the streets kinda shut down at night. But in places like Conway, Little Rock, Jacksonville, and NWA…all the time.