Legal chapter closes on Kelsey Smith murder

The Kansas City Star published this editorial on the Kelsey Smith case:

Legal chapter closes on Kelsey Smith murder

A life sentence has sent Edwin Hall off to the hard, anonymous confines of prison. He is ineligible for parole and unlikely to be heard from again by this community.

What should live on is the memory of Kelsey Smith, the vibrant young woman whom Hall abducted in the parking lot of a Target store in Overland Park. Searchers found her body near Longview Lake four days later.

Smith, 18, had graduated from Shawnee Mission West High School 10 days before she was killed on June 2, 2007. She was headed for Kansas State University that fall.

Her murder triggered an interest in safety seminars and self-defense courses. They, too, should be sustained.

Smith became a crime victim while running a routine errand in a suburb usually thought of as safe. Hall’s attack was a reminder of the need for constant vigilance.The teenager’s parents, Greg and Missey Smith, have started the Kelsey Smith Foundation. Among other things, it produces safety seminars and sponsors self-defense courses. Participants learn that it took Hall only 16 seconds to surprise Smith, shove her into her car and drive away.

A similar effort is the “TAKE Defense” program established by the family of Ali Kemp, the Leawood teenager who was murdered while working at a swimming pool in 2002. The program teaches women how to keep themselves safe.

With the sentencing of Hall, a chapter in a tragic story is finished. One way for people to honor Kelsey Smith’s memory is to learn how to decrease their own chances of becoming crime victims.

Missey and Greg Smith have demonstrated grace throughout their terrible ordeal. Their enduring gift is to use a family’s tragedy to help protect others.