Price of forgiveness

This is an old story, but I thought it mildly topical enough to be worth mentioning: CBS aired a television movie last Sunday night about a Tampa man named Bruce Murakami, whose wife and daughter were killed in a 1998 car accident after being hit by a drag-racing teenager. Murakami wanted revenge on the teenager, […]

This is an old story, but I thought it mildly topical enough to be worth mentioning: CBS aired a television movie last Sunday night about a Tampa man named Bruce Murakami, whose wife and daughter were killed in a 1998 car accident after being hit by a drag-racing teenager. Murakami wanted revenge on the teenager, but after a multi-year campaign to have the teenager charged with a crime, Murakami had a last minute change of heart and forgave the kid. Instead of having the kid sent to jail, he started working with the kid to convince other teenagers to drive safely. The point of the story was how forgiveness was so noble and wonderful, and how it saved Murakami life. (Hey, it was a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” movie.)

An inspiring story, I suppose. The movie forgot to mention, though, that forgiveness apparently only extended to people without deep pockets; Murakami may have let the kid walk free, but that didn’t prevent him from suing Dollar Rent-A-Car because the company had rented out — to the kid’s parents — the car that the kid was driving when he killed Murakami’s wife and daughter. (“Dollar settled the case for an undisclosed amount.”)

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