I’ve been thinking a lot about Thomas Junta lately.
He’s the hockey dad who was recently convicted of beating another hockey dad to death in full view of a rink full of horrified kids, including his own and that of his victim, Michael Costin.
Mr. Junta is a man that some reporters described as “hulking,” a 270-pound truck driver with a jutting jaw and, by all accounts, a serious anger-management problem. Is anyone out there surprised to hear that this so-called “gentle giant” had a record of arrests for previous assaults? That Junta’s own wife had sought a restraining order after he struck her in front of their kids?
Mr. Junta described the altercation that led to Mr. Costin’s death as “a stupid guy thing” that simply got out of hand. His attorney characterized Junta’s actions as self-defense. The prosecution scoffed at this description, noting the testimony of witnesses that placed Mr. Junta at the end of the fight sitting atop Mr. Costin’s chest, slamming his opponent’s head against the concrete rink floor, while bystanders screamed at him to stop.
How does a shouting match escalate into violence and death? How could anyone lose control that completely over something so trivial?
I was mulling this over as I drove home the other day. It was snowing and it looked like it was going to be a fairly substantial accumulation. The wind whipped huge white flakes around my windshield. I was more than a little anxious; our house is at the top of a continuous two-mile incline that rapidly becomes too slick to negotiate in icy weather.
As I turned the corner on the last quarter-mile before my driveway, I saw two vehicles stopped in the road, headed in opposite directions. The windows of both vehicles were open; the drivers, soccer-mom types, were holding an animated conversation in mid-road, oblivious to the snow and my elderly little car rolling to a stop behind them.
I paused a few seconds, waiting for them to finish their talking and move on. No response – the conversation continued. I tapped my horn, thinking that perhaps they hadn’t noticed me. Still no response. I waited a full thirty seconds, the snow falling faster by the second, and then tapped my horn again.
Their heads whipped around in my direction. Once more second or so of conversation, and then, finally, the Acura in the oncoming lane began to move. The driver, a thirtyish, expensively-dressed woman, her carefully made up face contorted with rage, pulled up beside me just long enough to extend an immaculately-manicured middle finger at me through her open window, and then sped past. The driver in front of me sat there passive-aggressively in the road for another thirty seconds, and then took off suddenly with a roar, vanishing over the top of the hill.
Why this ugliness? All I had done was make the two of them aware that they were blocking a public thoroughfare. I had tried to do this as politely as possible, short of getting out of my vehicle and saying pretty please. The sense of entitlement behind their ignorance was
