The sister of alleged teen killer James Edwards, Rachel Padilla, appeared on CNN tonight. She gives off a strong whiff of denial.
I knew he had a Facebook page, but I never looked at it. And it’s hard to believe that he will be–that he would even put things on there like that.
CNN host Erin Burnett had read Padilla some of Edwards’ more offensive posts, and tweets.
In terms of speculation about Edwards’ “racial” motivation for committing the alleged crime, Padilla said “I know that he has a lot of caucasian friends with whom he hangs with, and the only way that I would feel that he would say anything racist about anybody is because we have felt racism from some of the people here in the community.” Given that Edwards is not believed to be the one who pulled the trigger, Padilla said she doesn’t know why he has been “charged with first-degree murder when he wasn’t the one who shot and killed the guy.”
Padilla admitted that her brother had been in trouble for fighting in the past, but maintained that he’s “never been a vicious person” and she doesn’t “feel in my heart that he would go to such extents to take an innocent life.”
He just liked to threaten to kill people on social networks.
She said as far as she knew, he was not associated with any gangs, but she did say he “hung around older people that were affiliated with gangs.”
If you’re a teenager and you hang around with older people who are in gangs, you usually end up in a gang, in prison, or dead. Or on a progression that includes all three.
One gets the impression that James Johnson, whose son was threatened by the trio that allegedly killed Chris Lane, is right: Edwards had no parental supervision. His family had very little idea of what their 15 year old was up to.
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