The relationship between Yeardley Love and George Huguely deteriorated in full view of friends and teammates. Then, in private, it erupted.
In the spring of 2010, Yeardley Love's ex-boyfriend broke into her room, beat her and left her to die.
She would spend her final moments face down on her bed in a pool of blood, alone. She was 22 years old.
I was 22 years old that spring as well, and though I never knew Yeardley or her killer, George Huguely, the tragedy hit particularly hard.
Part of it was proximity: Charlottesville, Va. was an hour away from where I lived at the time, and had a few things broken differently, we all could have been classmates. Part of it was the sheer brutality of the crime: The idea that all of the gruesome actions laid out in the court documents could be committed by one human being against another. Part of it was the attention it drew: Two privileged students who had grown up minutes away from each other at the center of a murder in a idyllic college town sounds like the plot for a Lifetime movie, not a real-life incident.
But above all that, what really got to me was that two popular college students could be so alone on the night their lives turned into a twisted wreck. Both were members of Division I athletic programs, both were, by all accounts, well-known on campus, and both had plenty of friends.
So where were Huguely's friends when he was getting violently drunk, in the continuation of a well-established pattern? And where were they to stop him when he decided to march over to his ex-girlfriend's house to confront her? Where were Love's friends when she got into an altercation with Huguely two months before her death, and when he wouldn't stop harassing her even after that?
I suspect the answer is simple and all too prevalent. It's easy for anyone to ignore warning signs and gloss over dangerous habits, and even easier when the person exhibiting those signs and habits is a close friend. Dismissing it as just "so-and-so being so-and-so" is more convenient than intervening and putting a friendship at risk. And in college, when insecurity and awkwardness always rules the day, taking a stand can be just plain unpalatable. It's a choice every one of us has made at some point or another. Most times, these warning signs and habits evaporate over time, and it's something we can all look back at one day and laugh.
But here's the thing: Sometimes they don't.
And by that point, it's too late. For Yeardley Love and George Huguely, a drinking habit and a volatile relationship went unaddressed, spiraled out of control and ended in murder.
It's the winter of 2012 now, and I'm 24 years old, the same age Love would have been. A week ago, a jury recommended that the judge sentence Huguely to 26 years in jail for second-degree manslaughter. The facts were clear, and the punishment fit the crime. All the big television channels were there for the trial, straining to catch a glimpse each time Huguely was ushered, alone, out the side door.
I caught part of it too, driving past the courthouse each morning, a now-Charlottesville resident on my way to work. And even two years later, the feeling of overwhelming sadness is still there. Both Love and Huguely saw their lives destroyed that night, and not one person was there to stop it.
Should the judge follow the jury's recommendation, Huguely would be 50 years old by the time he finishes his sentence. He would be a middle-aged man who robbed himself of his prime at the same time he robbed his ex-girlfriend of her life. I don't feel bad for him. But I do hope that, when he's released from jail all those years later, he still has some friends.
For more on Yeardley Love, you can find my 2010 column here.
Image via The Hook.
Adam Cancryn is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.
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