Pondering a brutal killing as the risk of violence rises

In East L.A., in the Palisades, in Watts, in Pasadena and Long Beach, if you're a parent, you tell yourself a lie.

You tell yourself that your child is safe.

No car accident will take them, no illness, no violence.

You know it's not true because the news is filled with the deaths of young people, but you close your eyes and put your faith in the percentages.

But then there's a horrible story in your own neighborhood, and it punches holes in your shield. There's the child cut down by stray bullets while walking home from school or the store. There's the careening truck that takes out a bookstore and kills a toddler and her father.

Or there's the story of Lily Burk, 17, the Los Feliz girl killed Friday while running an errand for her mother.

Reading that story, I ached for the victim and wondered how her parents could breathe under such crushing news. I also did something a little selfish but human. I looked at the details to see if perhaps Burk was doing anything she shouldn't have been doing, or if she was in a place where she shouldn't have been. I wanted something, anything, that might reinforce the illusion that we can steer our children clear of danger.

Instead, the police account is a chilling tale of random, unpreventable violence. Police allege that on a relatively safe street near Wilshire Boulevard west of downtown, Burk was the victim of an abduction and robbery attempt by a transient and former prison inmate -- Charles Samuel. She was later found dead in her car on the edge of skid row.

We don't know Samuel's full story yet -- whether he is in fact the killer and what he was doing back on the streets. We do know that he had a lot of arrests, that he was in and out of prison and was recently in a residential treatment program for drug abuse. We do know that after Burk was killed, her head beaten and her neck slashed, Samuel was picked up by police on skid row. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, he was drinking beer and had a crack pipe. He also had Burk's cellphone and a key to her car.

So there it is, the brief narrative of a nightmare. You're left cold, sad, angry, and as you try to find any sense or meaning in it, you end up flailing.

Maybe we should build bigger prisons.

Maybe we should raise our children in a bubble.

Maybe we should move to a safer place.