An Alabama college student five months from graduation, a single father of three, and a dog they were watching are all dead — gunned down in a home where they were pet-sitting — and the national press can't be bothered because there's no political angle to wring from it.
Jazmine Alexis Bates, 22, and Jose Felix Alvarez-Duenas, 31, were found shot to death inside a Brookwood, Alabama, home Monday after the homeowner spotted a suspicious person on her security cameras while out of the country. Alvarez-Duenas had been watching her dog. When he stopped answering calls and texts, she checked the cameras, saw someone on her back porch, and called for a welfare check. Police arrived to find Alvarez-Duenas dead on the floor just inside the front door. Bates was found in a closet in the back bedroom. The dog was dead too.
De'Kendrick Crawford, 24, was arrested 10 hours later, found hiding in a relative's attic in Northport after a four-hour standoff involving drones, tear gas, and K-9 units. He was charged with capital murder of two or more persons, which carries a possible death sentence in Alabama. He cared more about himself than the victims, said Jack Kennedy of the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit: "He never gave up."
The motive? Nobody knows. Kennedy was blunt: "We don't know why he targeted them. They were not doing anything wrong. They had done nothing wrong to him. Nothing in our investigation has found that these victims in any way contributed to this; the motive is unknown." The homeowner knew both the victims and Crawford through work.
Half a world away, another American is dead under circumstances the press is equally eager to soft-pedal. Jamey Carney, 43, a Westchester County, New York, mother who moved to Killarney, Ireland, in 2021 with her 13-year-old daughter, was found beaten to death in her bed Tuesday. Her daughter discovered the body. Blood splattered around the room. The killer covered Carney's head and torso with a duvet before fleeing.
Irish police are searching for a "person of significant interest" — described by the Irish Independent as a Middle Eastern asylum seeker in his late 20s or early 30s who had lived in the area for over a year after previous stays in France and Turkey. Newsweek, by contrast, omitted the suspect's background entirely, noting only that police couldn't comment on his details "for legal reasons." The New York Post reported the suspect and Carney knew each other and had last been seen together Sunday and Monday. Neighbors heard an argument Monday afternoon. The Irish Sun reported they met at an anti-war protest months ago.
Carney was remembered as a devoted mother active in her daughter's sports and in Palestinian rights campaigning. Ports and airports are on alert. The suspect wasn't at his known address — an international asylum protection facility.
Two stories. Two dead Americans. One killed alongside a friend in small-town Alabama for no discernible reason, leaving three children without a father. One beaten to death in her bed in Ireland, her daughter left to find her. The Alabama case offers no narrative leverage — just a community shattered, a suspect who refused to surrender, and a capital murder charge. The Ireland case involves details the press would rather bury: an asylum seeker, a protest connection, a violent end. So both stories get the minimum.
The question isn't why the media covers what it covers. The question is what it chooses to ignore — and who gets left behind when there's nothing to gain.
