Vigilance needed even in safe community

Columbia County's 2008 crime statistics gave plenty of reasons for citizens to feel safer. Even as the population continues to rise, the crime rate in the county dropped by 2.1 percent.

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During that same period, burglaries in the county plummeted by 7 percent. That's exceptionally good news.

But all it takes is one crime, among dozens of other seemingly random crimes, to strip the veneer of safety and security right off the top of suburbia.

The brutal murder Wednesday morning of 41-year-old Kay Parsons is just such a crime.

Columbia County investigators believe it started as a burglary. The criminal or criminals had already ransacked one home in the Orchard Hill subdivision off Columbia Road, and likely saw Parsons drive away from the house next door.

The assumption is that the burglar or burglars broke the glass in a French door at the rear of the house to gain entry, and were inside when Parsons unexpectedly - to the criminals, anyway - returned home.

That's all it took for a burglary, supposedly a non-violent "property crime," to turn into murder. From the sketchy details of the police report, it appears Parsons was beaten while running from her attackers, who wielded a baseball bat or a claw hammer, or both, before she collapsed in her garage.

Just sickening. There is no hole deep enough, or punishment severe enough, for the vile people who could commit such an act. It is wrong to call them animals; animals do not show such depravity.

Investigators are leaving no stone unturned in tracking these criminals down, and need help from the eyes and ears of the public.

While crimes technically are solved and arrests made by the police, a community is only as safe as the citizens demand. This horrific crime should be a reminder that vigilance isn't optional for any of us - even in Columbia County, which otherwise remains the area's safest community.