I get no pleasure in hearing the news that the Manchester Arena hero turned common thief Chris Parker has been sent to prison for four years and three months. Parker, you may recall, was the homeless man who was initially feted as a good guy who went to help the victims when, in fact, he was stealing from the dying and the dead. It was an unbelievably sick and heinous crime and he deserves to spend his next few years incarcerated at her majesty’s pleasure. I hope the families and survivors get a little peace that justice has been done. I just don’t feel too good about it.
I know nothing about Mr Parker. According the reports, he has a history of petty crime going back two decades which suggests that his moral standpoint may not be entirely credible. But who would stoop so low as to steal from innocent victims of a suicide murderer? I do not know if he has mental health issues or a skewed outlook on life (or both) but this is not normal behaviour, is it? And, in the cold light of day, this is the story of a man who apparently has nothing, nowhere to live and nothing to look forward to.
Unsurprisingly, Parker got death threats after his despicable actions and failed to turn up in court. He was eventually found hiding in someone’s loft in Halifax. I felt sick, and still feel sick, about someone plundering the possessions of the dead and the dying and yet I cannot bring myself to wish him any more ill than he has (deservedly) suffered.
I hate all that “society is to blame” malarkey because the arguments are more complicated than that. However, the corrosive nature of a society in which we suffer intermittently from islamist terrorism and where homelessness is barely taken seriously by our leaders suggests things are not all they should be. Add in a bit of poverty along with people in chaotic lives and you have a heady brew that could contaminate everything.
And it’s easy me to try and be objective because I didn’t lose anyone at the MEN. The story is “Homeless bloke commits terrible crime and gets sent to prison”. I just hope prison doesn’t teach him to be even worse. If he can begin to apologise and then start to rebuild his life at the end of the sentence, prison may have been worth it. I’m not convinced, though.
