One Punch, One Death, One More Question

For those family members personally impacted by the “one punch” death last year of 18-year-old Christopher Fannon, the recent mistrial must be agonizing. Jurors deadlocked over whether the freakish, lethal punch — thrown by defendant Alan Thompson, 22 — was a matter of murder or manslaughter.

A retrial awaits.

But something else lingers on. A different question.

Fannon, a Sickles High School senior, was out with some buddies the night he was felled by that punch at a Citrus Park Steak n Shake. At 3:30 a.m. Not to be insensitive, but what rationale was so compelling — including approaching graduation — that permission was given or inferred for a group of high school teens to be out at such an hour? There are, as we all know all too well, a number of things that can happen at that hour. Almost all are bad; some tragic.

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