Petition to rename skate park after dead Langley boy gaining momentum
Credit to Author: Denise Ryan| Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2019 15:00:36 +0000
A petition to rename the Walnut Grove skate park, where 14-year-old Carson Crimeni was last seen before dying of an apparent drug overdose, has garnered nearly 3,000 signatures and become an online memorial of its own.
Many supporters of the petition, initiated by Langley father Geoff McNeill, have used the comments section to express this sentiment: Carson deserved better than this.
In the days after Carson’s death, the Walnut Grove skateboard park became a spontaneous public memorial site. Community members, including Carson’s grandfather Darrel, gathered to grieve and express their shock for what Crimeni’s death suggested: the community had failed to protect one of its own.
“I’ve lived here since 2010 and always felt it was a safe and welcoming community but with the videos that appeared online, it was anger first, disgust and anger, then severe sadness,” said McNeill.
McNeill didn’t know Carson, but his two daughters attended the same high school where Carson was a student last year. “I want him to be remembered and I don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” he said.
On the night Carson died, his grandfather went to the park searching for him. He found his grandson barely breathing in a ditch.
“He died in the park,” said Darrel Crimeni.
In the days after Carson died Crimeni would go to the site, read the notes, leave candles and clean up. Being around other mourners helped him feel less alone.
But after Crimeni’s memorial service on Aug. 29, the graffiti sprayed across the skateboard park’s bowls, including the number of a drug helpline, were painted over. The candles, flowers and notes that created an unofficial memorial were removed.
Crimeni said he is surprised and touched by the petition — he doesn’t know McNeill — and he’s grateful that Langley Township allowed the temporary memorial to remain as long as it did.
Carson was not known to use drugs, nor did he frequent the skate park, said Crimeni. Videos of Carson in distress that were posted online appear to show his “friends” laughing as he suffered have prompted a police investigation and raised questions about public awareness and civic responsibility.
Public memorials at the sites of tragic deaths are a common phenomenon, drawing mourners, offering a place for strangers to share their grief and seek answers for why the tragedy occurred.
Both McNeill and Carson’s grandfather say they hope for more than just a memorial — they hope to prevent something like this from happening again.
“It’s not about renaming the park for Carson, it’s more to hope something good comes out of a tragedy,” said Crimeni. “His buddies need to see and understand the danger, they need to understand the Good Samaritan law, and know that deciding to do nothing is a conscious decision.”
Sun Ha Hong, an assistant professor in communications at SFU, said spontaneous public memorial sites like the one at Walnut Grove skate park offer communities the opportunity to come together and grieve, but are usually temporary.
“So many forms of memorializing we have now are very ephemeral, they get washed away and taken away. The news cycle and social media move on to something else,” said Hong. “In the case of an incident like this you could go back to that space a year later and you might never realize that happened there.”
Hong said a more permanent memorial could be merited in this case, not just to remember the tragedy, but to address the wider issues.
“As a community, we need to ask what are the things we need to work through, but also what are the practical questions about how to memorialize?”
Memorials at roadside accident sites can create distractions for drivers and create safety risks for loved ones making pilgrimages of grief. Memorial plaques at sites where youth have died by misadventure, such as cliff jumping in Lynn Valley Canyon, can also “risk encouraging the wrong kind of behaviour,” said Hong.
What’s important is to ask questions about how to both remember Crimeni and address issues so his death could become a catalyst for change, said Hong.
Langley Township councillor Steve Ferguson, who has spoken with McNeill, said: “We want to see some action and some change, the petition will be coming to council and this will be on the agenda.
“It gives us all hope to know there are people who want to make a difference. We need to find a way to inform people of what to do in these situations, address public safety, work with addiction services, police, fire, the schools and find out what’s driving these kind of things.”
McNeill said options could include signage around what to do in the case of an overdose emergency, education around the Good Samaritan Act, which protects a person who provides aid to someone who is injured, or even a call box. But he also wants Carson to be remembered.
“I’m not going to give up on renaming what was a public memorial for a local student that I think the community failed,” said McNeill.
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