Leave My Town Alone

The past week the state and national news has descended upon my town. I wish I could say it's for a good thing like someone winning the lottery or finding a UFO but no it was for something bad that happened. At first it was surreal and kind of interesting that our little town was featured on even the Kansas City news but then when CNN had a story on their home page of their website and their truck showed up in town that really became kind of crazy. Now if you were to Google Maryville, MO you will see articles from the Miami Herald, LA Times, USA Today, CBS and NBC news.

Some of the news vehicles in town.

The truly sad part about this whole thing is that this Anonymous group posted this very creepy video and has basically threatened our town because they didn't accuse the boys who committed the crime.

 A quote from them:

"If Maryville won't defend these young girls, if the police are too cowardly or corrupt to do their jobs, if justice system has abandoned them, then we will have to stand for them," Anonymous said on a YouTube video."Mayor Jim Fall, your hands are dirty. Maryville, expect us"

SCARY RIGHT?!?!?! I don't know if the video is still up but all it is, is the mask (below) and a computer generated voice talking.

 Now because of this the news and social media has blown this whole thing out of proportion. I would tell you to read one of the stories but I honestly don't want you to because they are full of lies and exaggerations and it breaks my heart to see them try and destroy our town. People from different states are posting on social media sites like they know what happened. YOU DON'T LIVE HERE SO PLEASE SHUT YOUR MOUTH AND QUIT SPREADING LIES!!!!!!!! A girl in my nursing class said on FB the other day she was interviewed for one of the KC news channels. It truly pissed me off because she is from some other town and wasn't even living here at the time and had know clue what happened until now.

Next Tuesday the Anonymous group had said at first they were coming to protest on our courthouse lawn but as of today they have changed it to Tuesday night and instead of a protest it will be a vigil. I'm not looking forward to being in Maryville then because every freaking news person in the country will be there. They were there yesterday for a press conference and it was crazy then. But it also has an element of scary associated with it because what if they do something bad while they are here you never know with people today. I just wish that it would all go away and we could go back to being some little town known by few.

Tonight my mom was reading on FB where the Volleyball team in Maryville was wearing all pink to the game tonight to support a woman in the community who had breast cancer. There were comments on that post of people saying bad things about the other thing that was going on. They can't even let something good happen in our town without bashing it.

So please, please, please pray for my town and for everyone in the community. Please pray for people to stop spreading lies. Please pray for people to stop threatening our citizens. Please pray for the officials who have to deal with the ridicule. Please just pray for peace.