The Zahra Baker Case

As a father and heck as what I hope is a decent human being, the Zahra Baker case. If you don't know who Zahra Baker is, she is a 10 year old girl from Hickory North Carolina who is presumed to be dead.

I find it even more disturbing that Zahra Baker is from my area of North Carolina in Catawba County. The 10 year old cancer survivor had hearing aids and a prosthetic leg due to bouts with bone cancer. Video of Zahra Baker and her beautiful smile as she received her hearing aids have haunted me.

Apparently in addition to Zahra Baker having to fight bone cancer for most of her life, she also suffered abuse from her father and stepmother. There are many reports of people stepping forward to say "I knew something would happen to Zahra".

My question for those people is why didn't you step up and do something before she was killed? The search for the missing Zahra Baker rather quickly turned to a search for her body. If you think a child is being abused you should report it to the appropriate authorities, and keep reporting it until something is done to help the child.

Zahra Baker's prosthetic leg and now a bone have been found in nearby Caldwell County where police have been searching for evidence. At this point nobody has been charged in the murder of Zahra Baker but her stepmother Elisa Baker has been charged with obstruction of justice. Elisa Baker made a fake ransom note when she and Adam Baker reported Zahra missing. Both Adam and Elisa Baker have criminal records, mostly involving writing bad checks.

Nobody can be presumed to be guilty but I believe Adam and Elisa Baker killed the 10 year old girl, and authorities will be charging them soon. We have the death penalty in North Carolina and I hope it is used on whoever is found guilty of killing Zahra Baker.

This is the second time in a little over a year's time that Catawba County has had to deal with a shocking murder involving children. In March of 2009 a mother and three children were killed in what turned out to be a dispute over drugs. One of my sons knew the family that was killed and I had met the killer on one occasion previously.

I do not know anyone involved in the Zahra Baker case but it sill hits close to home. As a father of four kids including a daughter not much older than Zahra, it breaks my heart.