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- <text id=93TT0724>
- <title>
- Dec. 13, 1993: An Enemy Of Promise
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Dec. 13, 1993 The Big Three:Chrysler, Ford, and GM
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CRIME, Page 44
- An Enemy Of Promise
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>A triple killing shocks an elite naval community
- </p>
- <p> Friends expected Navy Lieut. (J.G.) Alton Lee Grizzard, 24,
- to be an admiral one day. Last week he was shot four times:
- once in each leg, once in the abdomen and, finally, once in
- the head. Classmates worshipped Ensign Kerryn O'Neill, 21, an
- honors student and a track star at the U.S. Naval Academy in
- Annapolis. She was found not far from Grizzard, curled in a
- fetal position. She had been shot at close range in the back
- of the head. Like Grizzard and O'Neill, Ensign George P. Smith,
- 24, was a midshipman at Annapolis and was due to report for
- duty as an engineer aboard the U.S.S. Salt Lake City, a nuclear
- attack submarine. He shot himself in the right temple with a
- 9-mm Ruger handgun after apparently using the same weapon to
- kill Grizzard and O'Neill.
- </p>
- <p> The heart can be an enemy of promise, undoing even the most
- disciplined of lives--as the elite community of sailors based
- in Coronado, California, found out last week. Smith and O'Neill
- had been fiances since her senior year at Annapolis. Two days
- before the murder, however, she broke off their engagement.
- Smith then sent a 13-page letter begging her to reconsider.
- They were seen arguing on Tuesday evening, just hours before
- the killing. She left that quarrel in tears. At about 1:45 a.m.,
- Smith reached O'Neill's sixth-floor apartment at the bachelor
- officers' quarters. He found Grizzard visiting O'Neill, exchanged
- angry words and then opened fire. Within seconds, all three
- were dead.
- </p>
- <p> What remains is a trail of suddenly hollow accomplishments:
- Smith chosen "best all around" by his high school class; Grizzard's
- passing for 12 touchdowns in his last year at Annapolis; O'Neill's
- 12 varsity letters. And what did O'Neill and Smith break up
- over? In the Los Angeles Times, Coronado police cited witnesses
- who said, "They had different ideas about their future." Now
- there is no future.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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