On Tuesday, the dealers who provided 18-year-old Henry Granju with the massive dose of methadone that killed him were arrested.
This is a long time coming; Henry’s fiercest advocate — his mother, Katie Allison Granju — was treated shabbily by the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, which dragged its heels about doing the most basic investigating before declining to prosecute (and, it must be noted, failing to follow up on leads that Katie and her family had provided).
Fortunately, the Knoxville Police Department conducted its own investigation, which resulted in the arrests of the two dealers at whose home Henry was found unconscious. The duo — along with the mother of Henry’s girlfriend — were arrested for, among other charges, dealing in a school zone, a park zone and a day-care zone.
Katie Granju posted a gracious post on Mamapundit, her personal blog, thanking everyone who worked toward these arrests — including the KCSO investigators who aided the police. She changed her Justice for Henry blog, with its vast repository of information related to the family’s own investigative work and information on successful drug prosecutions in other states, to one simple announcement thanking the police for believing “that ALL crime victims deserve equal protection under the law.”
On this cusp of the Jewish New Year, when we ponder justice and mercy and the power of apology, I’m thinking of the Granju family and hoping they find some small measure of peace.
How this story breaks my heart and terrifies me……at least there’s this.