Hope you're not too disappointed, Ray McCoy

The latest 24-hour news crisis, the Buckhead crane standoff, is over.

Carl Edward Roland, a bankrupt former software salesman and homicide suspect, climbed a construction crane in the toney Atlanta neighborhood a couple of days ago, to mixed reviews from area residents, tourists, shoppers, diners, and professionals. Seems he caused quite a bit of gridlock in Buckhead. Having been to Buckhead, I wonder how they could tell the difference from normal, but that's beside the point. For the better part of two days, earthbound heads strained skyward as they pondered his fate.

His alleged crime, strangling his ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in a pond behind her apartment building, is, to be kind, heinous. I'm not defending or excusing Mr. Roland in any way.

But equally disturbing to me is a quotation in a Los Angeles Times story this morning that The Birmingham News picked up off the wire. Writers Ellen Barry and Jenny Jarvie quote Ray McCoy, a mortgage banker:

I want to see the jump. If he's going to jump, he should jump. He's just wasting everybody's time and money.

Sigh. One life destroyed. Another in the balance. And the effects on Mr. McCoy?

Inconvenience.

Which prompts me to consider:

Do heinous actions like Mr. Roland's prompt attitudes like Mr. McCoy's, or is it the other way around?

In either case, we all lose.