A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

The June 4 issue of the Charlotte Observer has a short article about three men who raped a woman in her apartment and then ransacked the place–a depressingly routine news story these days. What caught our eye, however, were the police drawings of the suspects, which we have reproduced exactly as they appear on the Observer web page (including Number 2’s non-mouth).

What race are these fellows? Number 3 must be black, but the other two, especially Number 1, could be white. Fortunately, the Observer article included suspect descriptions:

“One was a dark-skinned black male, about 6-foot–2 or 6-foot-3, age 23 or 24, wearing dark clothes.

“Another was a black male, about 5-foot-10 and thin with long hair, wearing loose clothing with a shirt over his face.

“The third was a black male of medium build with a round face and short hair, wearing black sunglasses and a baseball hat.”

Now we know that Number 3 is a “black male,” as we suspected. Number 2 had the shirt over his face, which must be why the victim could not describe the mouth. That means Number 1 is the “dark-skinned black male.”

He looks to us more like a Martian than he does a dark-skinned black. Maybe the lighting is different in North Carolina.