The killing of Bobby Maher and the fear at the heart of parenthood

Before my daughter was born, I wrote her a letter I never sent. I was traveling for work at the time and stopped at a rest area to put into words the thoughts spinning in my head. I didn’t save the letter. It disappeared that summer amid the flurry of rituals tied to impending parenthood: painting walls, building cribs, buying toys and tiny outfits. But I remember telling her in that letter what I hoped she’d become. Courageous and wise. Resilient and kind.

A decade and a half later, I realize that much of what I hoped for her was the ability to thrive without me. Not that I didn’t embrace fatherhood. It fills me with such joy and richness and meaning that merely considering its absence leaves me short of breath. But our lives are finite, and my success as a parent ultimately rests on the idea that she can flourish — that she can stumble and fall and stand again — on her own.

That’s the abstract. Then there is the reality of those first fledgling steps toward adulthood, toward independence. The empty seat at the kitchen table. The pressures of fitting in, taking risks. Late nights out with friends. 

My daughter is almost 15 now. At that age, my buddies and I would swim in surging seas, howling like wolves as we slid down waves or dove from rocks into the cold waters below. Once we were old enough to drive, we sped through canyons and explored storm drains in utter darkness. Our lives are our own. 

And so is hers. Which inevitably means reckoning with another emotion that resides at the heart of parenthood. 

Fear.

***

I woke on April 8 to my wife and 11-year-old son discussing whether he should attend school that day. This was unusual. They are both creatures of routine and near-perfect attendance. I rose groggy and asked why he was uncertain. His friend had texted him earlier that morning. There were rumors that a student would shoot up the school. That in itself was distressing. But so was the reason why. 

The day before, there’d been a stabbing outside the mall here in Casper. One boy slammed the victim to the ground. A second stabbed him twice with a shoplifted knife. The wounded boy, a 14-year-old with curly hair named Bobby Maher, rose to his feet, staggered back toward the mall and collapsed at the entryway. By the time police arrived, bystanders had begun CPR. But there was no coming back from this. 

The other boys — both 15 — fled. Officers caught them on a residential street a few blocks away after they asked an old man to borrow his phone. They had wanted to call their parents. 

A friend of the suspects, angry over their arrest, was now threatening to take a gun to school, my son said. At least, according to the middle school rumor mill. Parents were on Facebook saying they planned to keep their children home. The killing would soon become national news, but at this point, the public didn’t even know whether the suspects remained at large. My wife and I stepped into another room. Should we still send our son to school? During that summer of impending fatherhood, I read everything I could about parenting. But where in “What to expect when you’re expecting” was the chapter on this? 

***

Time has reduced the memories to fragments, but I can recall standing in my closet as a 16-year-old and wondering what I should wear to a classmate’s funeral. It was May 1995 in a suburb of Los Angeles. My friends were outside waiting in the truck. The service was starting soon. Hurry up.

Days earlier, a group of teenage boys had approached a backyard hangout that belonged to a couple of kids in my 10th-grade class. There was an argument over some weed, and they squared up. In the ensuing scrum, one boy took out a knife and stabbed Jimmy Farris, a 16-year-old sophomore known for his love of heavy metal and weightlifting. Jimmy also rose to his feet, staggered away and collapsed dead from a knife wound. This, too, became a national story. We mourned as reporters took notes. 

But for some reason, what I remember is standing in my closet and considering what clothing to wear for the funeral. I surfed back then and dressed the part. I wasn’t contemplating my safety or the causes of youth violence. I wondered whether I should break protocol and wear a button-down shirt. That’s another reality of youth. Little things seem big, and sometimes the big things seem little.

Jimmy wore Metallica shirts, a wallet chain and heavy boots, the latter even during P.E. class. When the teacher took attendance, we’d line up on numbers painted on the black asphalt. After the murder, I remember looking over at Jimmy’s number and thinking it was strange he was no longer there.

***

Our son attended school the day after Bobby Maher was killed. But hundreds of kids stayed home. Parents were nervous. Scared. Can you blame them? 

Soon that fear turned into anger. At the teenage killers. At school administrators. At social media. At video games, bullies, other parents. 

Why didn’t authorities provide more information, people asked? Why did they take so long to answer basic questions? Why didn’t someone speak up and stop the killing? And what did the killers’ parents do to raise children capable of … this? 

“I can’t wrap my head around something like this even happening here,” one parent wrote on social media.

The aftermath of a tragedy can feel like standing in a bright room that suddenly plunges into darkness. You grope around in all that blackness, trying to find something, anything, to help you regain your bearings. 

What happens when there’s nothing there to hold on to? 

***

The Eastridge Mall, which sits on the far east side of Casper, is largely empty these days. Sears is gone. So is Macy’s. Only two restaurants are left in the food court. For adults, the mall is a place to visit before Christmas or to get your steps in when the wind is blowing too hard to walk outside.

But for burgeoning adolescents — the kids who are too old to hang with mom and dad but too young for a set of wheels — the mall remains a reliable hangout. Last summer, my son and his friends would regularly ride their bikes to the mall to socialize with their peers. When I visit, there are always packs of teens and pre-teens milling about. 

Perhaps that’s one reason parents here had such a visceral reaction to the killing of Bobby Maher. They saw in him their own sons and daughters. After his death, parents said to one another: My child also spent time with friends at that mall. What if she had been there that day? What if he had angered the wrong teenager?

A few days after the killing, I got a text from a friend and fellow father who often walks with me at the mall on those days when it’s too cold and too windy to exercise outdoors. He asked if we could meet downtown instead. 

“I’m not sure I can do the mall for the time being,” he said.

***

The details of Bobby Maher’s death made it all the more difficult to understand. The same day that rumors of a school shooting spread around town, prosecutors charged the two 15-year-old suspects with first-degree murder. Both face the prospect of spending the rest of their lives behind bars.

Reporters at major news outlets seized on the most sensational details of the stabbing. That the suspects wore “Shiestys” a type of ski mask popularized by a Memphis rapper of the same name. That Bobby died protecting his girlfriend after the 15-year-olds allegedly followed her around the mall. That in the weeks leading up to the killing, teenagers hurled violent threats at other teens. 

The district attorney decided the boys should stand trial as adults. If the police report is accurate, this was not a fistfight that spun out of control. Video footage captured the suspects shoplifting the soon-to-be murder weapon from a Target store attached to the mall. Both suspects acknowledged in police interviews that Bobby made no effort to hit anyone, even after the attack began with one of the boys punching him in the face.

In the report, police say Bobby told his attackers to put away the knife, that bringing a blade to a fistfight wasn’t fair. “I don’t play fair,” the teen now charged with the stabbing, a high school student named Jarreth Plunkett, responded.

But the same report that depicted cold, calculated violence also depicted actions that could only be described as childlike. When the suspects shoplifted their kitchen knives, they also stole Red Bulls and sour straws candy. Before the thefts, they played hide and seek at an electronics store. Police say they killed a boy, then borrowed a phone from an adult to call their parents.

The reality of youth. Little things seem big. And sometimes big things seem little.

***

David Street Station sits in the heart of downtown Casper, a central plaza often used for concerts and holiday events. In the summer, it serves as a splash pad for kids. In the winter, the plaza becomes an ice rink, with waves of young people circling a massive Christmas tree.

On April 11, hundreds of people filled the plaza to honor the life of Bobby Maher. Many wore blue — his favorite color — as a symbol of love for the boy and solidarity with his family. The community had spent the four days following Bobby’s killing asking how such a thing could happen. And now DC Martinez, the sports director at the local YMCA where Bobby played basketball, took the stage and shared his answer.

“It’s the diet that our youth are constantly consuming,” he started. When a person dies from a heart attack, he explained, it isn’t one burger that kills them. Instead, it’s years of eating poorly and failing to exercise. “This is very similar with what’s happening with our youth. But their diet isn’t food, but violent music, hopeless movies, ridiculous Instagram and TikTok videos they mindlessly watch; Snapchat fight groups where they praise each other for the best fight, which affects a constantly developing mind.”

Young people, Martinez told the crowd, need spiritual fitness, a true relationship with God. Parents, he added, needed to take stock of the culture their children are consuming.

“I refuse to let Bobby’s death be in vain,” Martinez told the crowd. “So I challenge this community to take a different approach on how we handle our own youth and the youth around you.”

Next, a pastor led the crowd in a prayer. It looked like things were winding down. Martinez reminded people to keep the plaza clean as they left.

But one more person wanted to speak. Onto the stage came Haley Bressler, Bobby’s 14-year-old girlfriend. She’d been at the mall that day and was one of about a dozen kids who witnessed the stabbing.  

Haley decided to speak, she told the crowd, because she knew that Bobby would have wanted her to. 

“He was,” she began, and then her voice cracked. “He was the bravest boy out there. I want to say that he was the best boyfriend I could have ever asked for.”

She stood at the lectern in a blue sweatshirt. At her side were several young people. Photos of Bobby — wearing a straw hat, posing for kindergarten graduation pictures, squinting into the sun from the backseat of a car — looked out on the crowd. Bobby Maher, the youngest of four brothers. Bobby Maher, who loved his family and whose greatest passion was basketball. A star player. A driven young man.

“Me and Bobby, we had so many plans for the future,” she said. “And I never thought I’d be saying all of this so early.”

In the crowd, young people cried and consoled one another. Parents held their children tight. Police lights danced off a nearby building. Blue balloons swayed in the wind. 

***

The next day, local leaders held a press conference “to initiate a community dialogue,” as the announcement put it. For nearly a week, the public had demanded action. Now, government officials stood at a lectern outside the city offices, hopefully with answers.

“The invitation we would like to extend today would be that of treating this moment of mourning as also a moment of reflection,” said Lisa Engebretsen, Casper’s vice mayor. 

Engebretsen discussed the need to avoid blame, to focus on civility, tolerance and empathy. Mike Jennings, the superintendent of Casper’s public schools, spoke next, stressing the need to ensure safe environments for students. Natrona County Commissioner Jim Milne took a tougher tack, calling the murder a “godless act” and insisting there should be no tolerance for the attitudes and behaviors that led to it.

“Accountability must be present in our homes and our institutions,” he said. “We cannot accept such behavior any longer.”

Tragedies can serve as a Rorschach test. Maybe the inkblot is a butterfly. Maybe it’s a demon. Maybe it’s nothing at all. 

Now, look at this one: the story of Bobby Maher. You see a community that needs God. You see a community that needs inclusivity. You see a failure of accountability. You see bullying, school shortcomings, disengaged parents. A broken culture. A broken country.

I’ve taken this test before. There was, of course, no social media back when Jimmy Farris was murdered. There were no Instagram videos or Snapchat fight clubs. But the soul searching feels similar. So does the blame. 

That we are hearing echoes today of conversations from 1995 raises all sorts of worrying questions for me, then a 16-year-old curly haired surfer and now an aging father of two. 

Most prominent among them: Can we fix this? 

***

I told my daughter I was writing this essay last week, as I drove her to school. She asked what it was about. I told her that Bobby’s killing had spurred a lot of fear among parents here, a lot of soul searching. You worry about your own children at a time like this, I said.

She thought about that for a moment. I’m glad you’re writing about it, she told me, but I don’t like how a lot of parents are trying to make this about themselves. It’s not about them. It’s about a boy who died.

She’s right, of course. It is about a boy who died. It’s about a family who will suffer his absence this day and all the other days of their lives. “Losing a child . . . it’s unimaginable,” Jimmy Farris’ mom told his hometown newspaper the Acorn nearly a quarter century after his murder. “I think about Jimmy every second of every day. He was such a special kid, and they ripped my heart out of my chest when they killed him.”

It’s impossible as a parent to read something like that and not tremble. But we can try to redirect that pain and dread and sorrow into supporting one another. Difficult? Yes. A band-aid? Possibly. But is there any other option save to try? 

My daughter was right in another respect. I’m as guilty as anyone in Casper of making this about myself. Fear and sadness have saturated our community these past few weeks. I’m swimming in these waters, too. 

And so I’m trying to hold fast against that fear — if not for my sake, then for my children and the adults I hope they someday become. I’m taking my own advice, or trying to anyway, the guidance I offered to my daughter all those years ago at that rest stop. 

Be resilient and kind, I told her in that unsent letter. Be courageous. Be wise.