10-hour Ga. manhunt ends after bloodhound K-9 locates brute accused of shooting mother of his child

keep Darian Berry Sr. away from a woman he'd already terrorized. He's a convicted felon. He's now accused of shooting the mother of his child, trying to confine her, setting fires, stalking her. That's not a man who slipped through the cracks once. That's a pattern, documented, presumably known to somebody in a courthouse or a probation office, and it kept escalating anyway until he allegedly put a bullet in her.

We're glad the K-9 found him. Credit where it's due to whoever ran that search. But the story that actually matters here isn't the manhunt, it's why a convicted felon with an arson and stalking history was free to allegedly do this at all. Stalking cases get treated like a nuisance charge in a lot of jurisdictions right up until somebody ends up dead or nearly dead. This woman is alive, which by the pattern of these stories counts as lucky.

We keep hearing that the justice system needs to "believe victims" and "take domestic violence seriously," and that's fine as a slogan, but slogans don't stop bullets. What stops it is bail decisions, protective orders that get enforced instead of filed, and felons who don't get to cycle back onto the street after the third or fourth red flag. Somewhere between his last conviction and this manhunt, something failed her. Catching him after the fact is the minimum. It shouldn't be the whole story.