Dear Editor:

Upon learning of the death of a friend of mine, Alex Booth, from a friend still attending school at SIU, I visited the DE Web site to read the article in hopes of finding out more information. What I found to be more appalling than the loss of a friend and former teammate was what two people had written in response to the article. I am disgusted at the level of ignorance from those first two comments.

The first one, being as this happened in Carbondale, would hold some ground under normal situations. They wrote in to blame his death on a drug overdose of all things. However, you failed to check into Alex’s life, which would have shown that he did not partake in the use of drugs. I knew him personally as a friend and former teammate and can verify this.

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The second entry had the title of “Saluki Logic” and criticized the DE for publishing the story claiming it would hurt SIU’s reputation. To imply that the second comment was anything resembling logical as your cowardly and anonymous name gives hint to is equally nauseating. People die everyday, as is common fact. The DE posted this story because it’s a tragedy when someone of such young age dies and the fact that he goes to the same college that the DE revolves its life around. If you didn’t want to read the article, then you did not have to and should not have read it.

You should both be ashamed of yourselves. The fact you hide behind a veil of secrecy only gives little hope that you do still have some morals in that you were afraid of what others would think of you. Your ill-fated and irresponsible comments are repulsive. People like you are worthless to society.

William Reed

2007 SIUC alumnus

Editor’s note: Due to frequent misuse, article comments have been temporarily suspended from siuDE.com. While once a forum for informative debate, article comments have recently served as a place for Internet users to slam each other. We apologize to our readers for letting these comments get out of hand. We still encourage readers to interact on any article or Carbondale issue by submitting a letter to the editor. Letters can be sent to [email protected] or [email protected].