Maniac accused of killing Pittsburgh doctor sexually assaulted

You have to wonder what goes through a mind like that. The man accused of killing a Pittsburgh doctor is now also charged with sexually assaulting a woman and, as if that weren’t enough, stealing her cell phone. Not a getaway car. Not cash. A cell phone. That detail is so petty it almost gets lost in the horror, but it shouldn’t. It tells you who we’re dealing with. This is not a person who made one terrible mistake. This is someone for whom cruelty and theft are just part of the same ugly routine.

The system keeps pretending these people deserve the benefit of the doubt. Over and over, we see violent offenders back on the street, and then a doctor is dead. A woman is assaulted. A phone is in some maniac’s pocket. It’s a pattern that’s impossible to unsee. We’re not asking for crystal balls. We’re asking for basic consequences, for people like this to be taken off the street before they get another chance to ruin more lives.

This didn’t have to happen, and we all know it. The red flags were probably there in black and white. Someone’s rap sheet, someone’s skipped hearing, someone’s lenient sentence. Instead, the public gets another tragedy and the left gets another talking point about “root causes.” The people of Pittsburgh deserve better. The doctor’s family deserves better. And that woman, the one who went through a sexual assault and then had to watch this guy grab her phone, deserves a justice system that treats her attacker like the menace he is, not a client in need of services.