The worst thing about news stories is that they often bring up more questions than they answer. Afterward we are left with questions that dangle like cut electrical wires inside of our heads. Whatever happened to the basic tenants of who, what, when, where, how and why? One could call this dearth of answers an act of domestic torture.
One story that follows me like a ghost is that of Tony Pella, the kid who was found dead under the Magnolia Bridge in 2007. I drive past his shrine attached to the top curve of the bridge nearly every day, a sight that helps keep this unfinished story dangling.
Suspicious deaths and homicides are rare in Magnolia - there have been a few, and lord knows we have our share of suicides, but for the most part dead bodies stand out as much as they actually should everywhere!
Most of us remember the story: 22-year-old Tony and his father drink at Ozzie's bar on lower Queen Anne on Cinco de Mayo of 2007; Tony annoys a bouncer by shaking a pole holding up an awning in front of the bar; Tony's father comes out of the bar and sees his son walking away, down the sidewalk, and decides to run around the other side of the block for fun and meet Tony coming in the other direction; Tony never makes it around the block; Tony's body is found two weeks later below the Magnolia Bridge.
I called Tony's mother Martina - who graduated from Queen Anne High School the year before it closed and just a few years after I did - to ask if the cause of Tony's death had ever been solved. "No," she said, "[Tony] is just a number to them" - meaning the detectives and the Seattle Police Department. I also asked her about the shrine and found out that it is she who freshens it every month.
I called the King County Medical Examiner's office to find out Tony Pella's 'cause of death' and was read this: "Multiple skull, rib and lower extremity fractures due to blunt force injuries of head, trunk and lower extremities. The manner of death is considered undetermined."
Um, sounds like he got the crap beat out of him to me.
I believe it was determined that Tony did not die from falling off of the bridge but that he was brought to that site. But maybe this is merely hearsay. Anything at this point is hearsay. Even I know, from watching that television show "The First 48," that once 48 hours has passed after someone's death the chances of finding out what happened are cut in half, at least. And Tony was still just a 'missing person' in the first 48 hours.
Tony's death will remain a mystery. His life was a short story, his death a news article that fades in order to make room for all the other unfinished stories. I guess journalism is a lot like life - we have no other choice but to let what is unresolved go.[[In-content Ad]]
