Marriage and career go out with a bang

Last Sunday the upscale city of Irvine came face-to-face with the ugliness of desperation and violence. 

University of California Irvine graduate student Brian Benedict was charged with the murder of his newly ex-wife Rebecca Benedict.

Benedict found himself enraged and distraught over his recent divorce that was made official on  Thursday Sept. 10. A judge ruled in the favor of his wife giving her majority custody of their 4-year-old son and entitling her to $920 worth of child support. 

Mr. Benedict claimed that this would cause him to have to drop out of his graduate work so that he could attain a job that would allot for his new expenses. 

Benedict’s background consists of his nomination to the U.S. Naval academy, where he studied physics. After graduation in 1996, instead of going into the Navy, he was assigned to the U.S. Air Force’s Space Command.

Benedict left active duty in 2003 and decided to continue his studies at UCI for his masters degree in  physics. He then met fellow UCI student , then Rebecca Clarke. The soon-to-be unhappy couple married April, 1 2004. The irony of getting married on April Fools Day is not wasted here. 

Irony finally caught up to the couple in 2006 when they separated. Rebecca later filed for divorce January of this year. 

Witnesses say that Brian seemed distraught even before the court hearing for their divorce. UCI campus security said that he came to them asking about child support but didn’t seem strange to them. 

Neighbors who saw and heard the shooting at his campus apartment noticed Brian take the child after shooting Rebecca and put him in a car. Afraid that he was going to take the child and flee the scene the neighbors stepped in and physically restrained Brian until police arrived. 

How one immediately jumps to the conclusion that killing his ex-wife would be the best solution to his new money problems is astonishing. 

A military-man, should have a better sense of right and wrong when it comes to the use of firearms than the civilian man. 

First off its not as if his current education session was essential to him obtaining a well paying career. He already has a bachlor’s degree in physics and was only adding on to his education. 

It is not as black and white as he saw it, he could have easily cut back on his education and gone part-time school and full-time work like many students already do even without child support and an ex-wife. 

Violence is never a good path to take, especially when there are so many other ways he could have handled his situation.