The Evil We Do Follows us
The golden rule is simple, treat others the way you want to be treated. What goes around comes around. Surrey's mob mentality is not limited to gender or race. Every community and every culture has good and bad. Every country has criminals. That's why every country has prisons. Nevertheless, no matter how tightly evil grips a community there are always more good people then bad. Sometimes discouragement and fear tend to paralyze the good people so that the bad people are free to reign with terror.
Notwithstanding that, every person has good and bad in them as well. Sometimes a hardened conscience can see individuals make serious mistakes that affects them and others for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, denial will never help someone overcome their mistakes. Katherine Quin was evil. She had a good side to her. She was a mother and a daughter. Yet she had a very violent disposition.
The case hit home for me and I attended parts of the trial. I spoke with one female witness who was subpoenaed and terrified to testify. The police brought her to the court to testify. Right before Mathew Martins was murdered at the Surrey Central Sky Train Station, Katherine Quin had punched this woman in the mouth giving her several stitches and made death threats towards her. That testimony wasn't admitted to the court.
In fact there was a trial before the trial and a lot of evidence wasn't allowed. Like the police video of Quin when she was first taken into custody for questioning right after the murder. She was very uptight and kept saying "I'm a tough bitch. No one fucks with me." That video tape wasn't allowed because at that point Quin didn't know she was a suspect.
I was interested in the case because my daughter showed me Mathew Martin's Nexopia page. She had a friend who was friends with Mathew. She said he was very small for his age and always wore a crucifix around his neck and was assaulted more than once for wearing it. His murder at Surrey Central was shrouded with confusion as to what really happened and why.
When I first saw the accused I was surprised. The guy was huge. Why would a big guy beat a small guy to a pulp and keep at it throwing him around like a rag doll without stopping? The big guy had nothing to prove and beating the small guy would do nothing to build his reputation. I just didn't get it. Then the story started to unfold. Katherine Quin had a violent disposition. She saw small Mathew, made a comment about his crucifix and tried to rip it off his neck. He fought back but she was persistent. He stabbed her with a pen and fled.
Quin was slighted and played the victim telling her large boyfriend the small kid had stabbed her. She failed to tell him he stabbed her with a pen and she failed to tell him he was defending himself from her trying to rob him. She failed to mention that part. Hearing only part of the story the boyfriend was understandably irate. He finds the kid and gives him a beating. Only he got totally carried away. He kept pounding him over and over without stopping. The whole thing was caught on videotape at the Skytrain station.
Female witnesses tried to intervene but he overpowered them. They kept begging him to stop and kept shouting "You're killing him." Finally when he was done he walked over to the boy checked his pulse and said "He's not dead yet." and walked away. Then witnesses testified that Katherine Quin walked up to her boyfriend handed him a bear bottle and said, "If you love me you'll kill him." He then takes the bear bottle, breaks it and slices the boys throat. Tragic and senseless.
Quin denied making that statement in court but witnesses testified they heard it. Surely the video shows Forslund checking the pulse, walking away then returning to finish the job. Forslund was totally distraught at the hospital where Quin was taken for a nonlife-threatening wound. He genuinely believed she had been stabbed with a knife and that it was serious. He was so distraught that he assaulted several police officers and had to be tasered before they could cuff him.
Robert Forslund was no angel. He didn't have that crackhead look his girlfriend had. He was healthy and well fed but as cases showed he had no respect for the police. Nevertheless, Quin was the real villain in this case who caused and orchestrated the whole thing. She should have got a longer sentence than Forslund did.
This all brings us to the mob mentality that needs to change. Crack in Surrey makes the violence much worse just like it does in East Van. We need to get rid of the crack by imprisoning those who profit from the sale of the drugs not those addicted to the drugs and we need to create stiffer sentences for violent crime not possession of marijuana. Smoking a blunt does not make you want to take an axe to someone's head. If they can use methadone to help addicts get off heroine then they can use BC Bud to help addicts get off crack. It would calm them down and help them develop an appetite to put some meat on their bones.
