THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, September 22, 1995             TAG: 9509220007
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   44 lines

MURDER COVERAGE NOT A MATTER OF RACE

While in the Virginia Beach area on business, I read Charlise Lyles' column comparing how murder of a member of one race in a certain place gets less coverage than the murder of a member of another race in another place.

My family is extremely upset regarding the brutal, senseless murder of my niece, Amber Zajac. To read yet another article about her murder is hard enough, but when she is referred to as a white teenage girl in Virginia Beach and used to contrast the great attention given to a member of one race with the lesser attention given to a member of another race, that is offensive!

I am so tired of racism being brought into every aspect of life. Amber was not racist in any way. As a matter of fact, during the funeral services Amber's father stood at the front of the church and said, ``If you look around at the hundreds of people here today, you will notice there is not one particular race or color. Amber loved people and judged people for who they were inside, not what they looked like on the outside.''

The African-American boys Ms. Lyles referred to in her article were involved in drugs and they lived in Portsmouth, where I believe the crime rate is substantially higher than that of Virginia Beach.

Amber did not die of an illness nor an accident; she died because someone had so much disrespect for the value of life, he felt he could take another's.

Amber was brutally raped and strangled to death as she walked home from a friend's house. This crime is very rare in Virginia Beach, and whether the girl was my niece or some African-American, Asian-American or any other race of girl, the coverage would have been the same.

This murder got the amount of coverage it did because it shocked people. My brother kept saying, ``This doesn't happen here, it just doesn't; that is why I live here.''

RON ZAJAC

Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

Sept. 14, 1995 by CNB