Editorial: Victim's stories have to be remembered

Homicide is a very clinical name given to the killing of one human being by another.

Legally, killings can fall in a spectrum of responsibility. Vehicular homicide, involuntary and voluntary manslaughter, different degrees of murder. They all mean the same thing in the end. One person’s story ends. The drama of another begins.

On Tuesday, Christina Korbe, 53, was released from prison. The 14-year legal saga that started when she pulled a trigger in her Indiana Township home came to its close.

Korbe pleaded guilty in 2011 to voluntary manslaughter for the 2008 shooting of FBI agent Samuel S. Hicks, 33, who was serving a warrant for drug charges on her husband, Robert R. Korbe.

It was an early-morning raid. Hicks was part of a team of law enforcement. He was the one who breached the front door. Despite his ballistic vest, Korbe’s gunshot down the stairs from the second floor found his chest.

Korbe’s name has stayed in the news over the years as her case wound through the legal system. Arrest, charges, plea, appeals. In 2020, she lobbied for compassionate release because of an unconfirmed case of covid-19. She then asked for house arrest for the rest of her sentence.

This year, her good behavior, including acting as a trained suicide companion and making “scared straight” videos, knocked the last year or so off the 15 years and 10 months of her sentence.

It knocked nothing off Hicks’ death or the ongoing sentence of mourning for his family.

One would hope Korbe is a better person today than she was on that November morning. Her husband remains in prison on drug charges — his original 25-year sentence bolstered by additional charges for selling drugs in lockup.

But while Hicks died, his legacy lives on.

He didn’t get to continue building his story as a law enforcement officer or a father or a husband or a son. All of that was stolen from him.

It didn’t stop his impact on the causes and communities that mattered to him, though. The Samuel S. Hicks Memorial Fund has raised money in his name and poured it into important work. It has gone to libraries and Boy Scouts of America. It has funded kids’ sports. It has gone to the YMCA and the Scottdale Police Department.

It has gone to his alma mater, Southmoreland School District, funding scholarships, educational programs, athletics and more. It has helped families in need and families in their darkest hour who lost a loved one in the line of duty — families like his.

It is important to document the legal journey of the perpetrator in a crime. It keeps the system accountable. But it is just as important to keep the story of the victim from being lost along the way.