Tag: Humboldt County

It has been two months since the murder of David Josiah Lawson, a Humboldt State student who was stabbed at an off-campus party Easter weekend. Lawson was a 19-year old sophomore at HSU from Perris, California, in Riverside County. Police arrested 23-year-old Kyle Zoellner at the scene. After five days of preliminary hearings and 17 witness testimonies, Eureka Judge Dale Reinholtsen released Zoellner due to a lack of physical evidence.

Kyle Zoellner, the suspect accused of stabbing Humboldt State University student David Josiah Lawson to death at an off-campus party Easter weekend, was released from Eureka’s jail. All charges were dropped. At the five-day preliminary hearing, I watched Zoellner’s girlfriend and her friends lie under oath. Black lives cannot matter as long as non-black people and their word is held in a higher regard than Black people. Black lives cannot matter within the realm of white privilege so long as the stereotypes of Blackness allow for others to use Black bodies as scapegoats.

This is a story about music, radio and the connection to the human spirit. The date is Jan. 10, 1992, and Troy Williams and his cellmate at Pelican Bay Prison are using wire to make an antenna for a radio. Williams was looking for something on the radio he was familiar with, but as usual he was greeted by a flurry of country music. This particular night however, Williams and his cellmate were fortunate.