Girl Is Killed Outside Party in the Bronx

By Michael Wilson and Nate Schweber
Published: November 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/nyregion/17shot.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

This article is about a 17-year-old girl that got shot and killed in 1495 Morris Ave. at 2 a.m. on Sunday. Two men, one 17 years old and the other 18 years old, were shot in the leg and were taken to the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center. The girl, Nadairee Walters, was stepped on and then dragged into the building when the shootings started, while she was dead.

I think that the lede should have started with the fact that people stepped on her body while stampeding to get into the building to avoid getting shot. It could have drawn more attention to the readers. The authors should have wrote the paper as an obituary. They did not say much about Nadairee’s family or any services or funeral.

The nut graf of the article was the fact that people stepped on her while she was dead, but it still should have been in the lede instead. The article had one quote from a neighbor that heard the shootings and saw from her window what happened to Nadairee. I guess the narrative was A first which was the police and then B which was that one quote from the neighbor.

The article ended with a statement about the mother not wanting to speak to reporters and a description of the scene of the building, “Empty liquor bottles and an overturned artificial Christmas tree littered the lobby.”