By Mary Getlein

May 12 was celebrated by most Americans as Mother’s Day. On Glyndon Ave., things were not the same. A guy was living in his camper and that irritated someone, and they decided to take the law into their own hands. So they firebombed the “Magoo’s” camper.

Rick Sealent, a man who lived on Glyndon Ave., said he could hear the guy screaming when it happened. Magoo was lying in his bed when they bombed the camper.

The next morning I heard about it and went over to take a look. There was just a shell of twisted metal left. The guy from Bruffy’s re-po yard was there, getting ready to haul it away. Magoo didn’t want to talk to me. He was talking to police about the prosecution of this case. The cop said Magoo had to look that up with Arson. The guy looked like you would expect someone to look after being attacked with a firebomb: dirty, overwhelmed, scared, and desperate. He was lucky to be alive. He lost everything he owned, including his home, in about ten minutes.

I hope they catch the guys that did this. The night before, someone had come by the camper and broke all the windows. Magoo called the police, but the police didn’t respond. The firebombing happened the next night.

It surprised me that this happened on Glyndon Ave. It’s such a clean, pretty neighborhood with people who care about their kids’ education, with beautiful gardens and trees lining the streets. It’s the last place you would expect a firebombing to occur.

Firebombing was one of the weapons leveled at civil right activists in the ’60s. Firebombings and straight-up assassination were the weapons of choice of some of the most twisted, hateful people the world had seen. Born in the U.S.A., our modern, “today” hateful twisted beings are back to using such horrible tactics against the crime of being poor and living in your camper.

Now Magoo has nothing and nowhere to go.

It’s someone declaring war on you because you live in a camper. Most people who live in a vehicle know the rules and try to blend with the other cars, and not attract attention. When you use such violence against undefended people, you join the brutal forces of hatred. There are many ways of killing people, but burning someone out of their homes has got to be the one of worst.

This is a frightening example of what happens when you take “the law” into your own hands. What happens is chaos and random acts of violence. What if there had been little children in the camper? Would that change the point of view for you? There are 50,000 people, men, women and children living on the streets of LA on any given night. These people need to be protected, just like anybody else. There can’t be two systems of justice: one for the housed, and one for the homeless. Who do you think comes out on top?