An Injustice Worse Than the Plight of George Floyd

The names of Terry Aultman and Brenda Aultman are not well known, but they should be, more so than that of George Floyd.

George Floyd was a repeat offender with a long rap sheet who was resisting arrest at the time of his death.  He did not deserve to die, but unlike the Aultmans, he was not just an innocent bystander.

George Floyd died while being restrained by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, and later pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd’s constitutional rights.  At the time of his death, Floyd was suspected of having passed a counterfeit $20 bill, a misdemeanor in the state of Minnesota.

According to reports, the Aultmans were peacefully riding their bicycles home from a Biker Week event when they were stabbed repeatedly, had their throats cut, and were left on the street to die.  They were an older couple, apparently without criminal records, who had moved to Daytona Beach just six months before to enjoy their retirement.

The suspect in the Aultman murders is Jean R. Macean, a 32-year-old black man with a criminal record of drug-related and driving offenses who was filmed walking down the street at the time the Aultmans were killed.

According to Daytona Beach Police chief Jakari Young, Macean has now confessed to the double-homicide.  He is “the man responsible for murders of Brenda Aultman and Terry Aultman.”  Macean, who was captured in the Orlando area, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.  Unlike his victims, aged 48 and 55, Macean is an extremely large and muscular young man.  He certainly had the means to carry out these horrific murders.

The motive in this case remains unknown or unreported.  It may turn out that the crime involved a black man who, on a whim, simply chose to kill two defenseless older white people.  If this is the case, will the courts decide to try the perpetrator on hate crime charges as well as first-degree murder?  Chief Young was spot-on when he said the murders were “a reminder of just the evil that exists in our society today.”

The Aultman murders were truly horrific — “one of the most vicious and gruesome incidents that I’ve witnessed in my 20 years,” said Chief Young.  That being the case, why have these murders not aroused the same level — or a greater level — of reaction that the George Floyd murder did?  The murders have been covered extensively on local news channels in Florida and on some websites, but in a search of broadcast and published reports, I have found zero coverage on the national mainstream news channels, except on Fox news and in the N.Y. Post, which to its credit has run full-length reports.  Why have we not seen the same demonstrations, riots, media accounts, and outpouring of grief that accompanied the death of George Floyd?

The only reason, I believe, is that the Aultmans were two middle-class whites, while Floyd was a black man who died while resisting arrest at the hands of white police officers.  Or, to put it in more basic terms, the Aultmans were white, and Floyd was black.

Left this way, two horrendous murders will remain entirely unknown to the nation as a whole, and the Aultmans will quickly be forgotten, except to those who knew them.