Michelle Gardner-Quinn

It was over as soon as it had started. I cried and cried but I knew that nothing I could do would bring her back. Michelle was an environmentalist, which meant that she really cared about the Earth. She would do all she could to help it. When I woke up that morning, my mom had said that she was in the paper. I went over and looked at the article. I thought that the article would be for something good. After I read that little clip in the news paper, I was totally changed. Michelle Gardner- Quinn had been abducted, which meant that she was kidnapped. I just stood there in complete shock. I have heard of instances where people had been kidnapped, but I never thought that it would happen to someone that I knew.

Michelle was walking home to her campus dorm at night all alone. She borrowed a cell phone from a stranger. A jewelry store surveillance camera caught Michelle walking with the man (the owner of the cell phone). A few days later they found her lifeless body stuffed in a rock crevice by Hunting Gorge in Richmond, Vermont. They took an autopsy (the medical examination of a dead body in order to establish the cause and circumstances of the death). They found that she had been sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled.

I knew Michelle very well. She was a close friend of mine. She actually taught me how to swim. She was an amazing person. When ever I was around her, I always got shy. Now, looking back, I wish that I would have been more outgoing around her. Just enough to become closer to her. I think that, if anyone, she was the one who really deserved to live a good life. Maybe if she was still alive today, the world would be a better place.

I didn't go to her funeral because I would have been to sad. My mom, dad, and sister went though. They said that it was definitely sad, and that I would not have liked it. The news is that the man who killed Michelle has been sentenced to a life in jail with no chance of parole. In Vermont I don't think that the death sentence is allowed. So this man has to spend the rest of his days in a dirty old prison. The man who did this horrible thing to Michelle has 3 children and I think a wife as well.

I really miss Michelle. She was an amazing person. I will always remember Michelle. I think that everyone will. She is one of those people who you could never forget, in a good way of course.