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April 11, 2007

Keith Moore

When I first learned from Adrastos that the guy who was shot and killed Uptown yesterday was Deacon John's son Keith Moore, my mind made a few quick leaps and I noticed in my mind, for the first time, the similarity between Deacon John and this short, funny kid I went to Franklin with named Keith Moore.

Sure enough, same guy.

I haven't seen him since high school, and in fact I don't think he actually finished at Franklin. I probably wouldn't have recognized him if his 43-year-old self passed me on the street. But I remember the kid version of Keith Moore and his evil, conspiratorial grin. I remember how smart he was and how twistedly funny he could be. How he could lean over at the most inappropriate time and whisper the most innapropriately funny thing about this kid or that teacher and you'd be the one who got in trouble for laughing out loud.

Some times I wonder if I went through my junior high and high school yearbooks, how many bodies I would be looking at. I know a kid I went to Alice Harte with who was found shot dead up by the levee many years ago, the victim of a drug deal gone bad. Now there's Keith. Probably several from Edna Karr.

Is there even a list of the names of these folks? Do they really just disappear after their brief time in the news? For a while this year I was trying to keep track of them all...their names, where they were from, how they died. I gave up after around 25 murders. It got so there wasn't even enough time in the day to keep track of them all.

It doesn't seem like this should be normal, to wonder these kinds of thoughts.

Posted by ray at April 11, 2007 4:01 PM |
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Comments

Good post, Ray. My friend the Z-Man spent some time with Deacon John yesterday. He was not only devastated but puzzled by what had happened. Keith wasn't a thug or a harcore doper.

Posted by: Adrastos at April 12, 2007 9:10 AM

Posted by: judyb at April 12, 2007 11:42 AM

I also knew Keith, not well enough to really consider him a friend, but we ran in some of the same circles and had some friends in common. It had been at least five, maybe ten, years since I had last seen him. But a few months ago, I thought I recognized his voice at the tail end of some local news story about guns and crime. I had the TV on while was doing other things, so I wasn't really paying attention until I realized that I recognized one of the people in the "man on the street" interview segment. But it seems like I remember him shrugging off some proposed change in the law about carrying permits because everybody in the city already carried a gun anyway. I suppose that any impact of replaying that interview, assuming I'm remembering it correctly, would be lost on most people because of the official version of what happened.

Assuming that the police version is correct, it shouldn't be dismissed as another drug murder -- of course nothing should. But something's wrong when transactions that occur everyday in every city in the country start ending up in murder. Anyway, Adrastos is right, he was no thug or hardcore doper.

Posted by: bayoustjohndavid at April 12, 2007 10:48 PM

i am good friends with Keith and his buddy Chuck Reily. We are all troubled about the death scene in NOLA. His death reaffirms what a waste the malignant ethic of the street is in the big sleazy....i will think of my humorous friend everytime i see a busted radio

Posted by: tao changer at August 9, 2007 2:12 PM

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