On an overcast, gray afternoon, the playground at River Ridge at Canton apartments was empty. It’s been that way, rain or shine, for the last seven weeks, said James McCollum.
“You used to see kids out there all the time playing,” said McCollum, who’s lived in the complex for four years. “But, ever since it happened, you don’t see them out there anymore — or hardly ever.”
The “it” needs no explanation in Canton. The abduction, sexual molestation and slaying of 7-year-old Jorelys Rivera on Dec. 2 and the events that flowed out of it last week — the killer pleading guilty and committing suicide in prison; Canton Police Chief Jeff Lance resigning — have become an almost physical landmark, familiar to everyone in town.
Residents are left struggling to regain their bearings.
“Something like this hits a small town harder and has a greater proportional impact on people than in a big city,” said City Manager Scott Wood. It was Wood who asked for Lance’s resignation after a scathing independent report found he and his department had mishandled the initial search and investigation when Rivera disappeared.
Even if the department had worked faster and more efficiently, it would not have saved Rivera’s life, the report found. But the criticism of the police department shook people’s faith in Lance and the department at a time when they were dealing with an incomprehensible crime, said City Councilman James Beresford. That left the city with no choice but to change the leadership of the department.
Many residents who didn’t know Rivera or her family were stunned at how her hard her killing hit them. “What got me was how close it was,” said Stephanie Joyner, who has lived in Canton six years.
“I think we all kind of adopted her, the little girl, even though she was dead. It was that emotional. It really touched all of us. It felt personal. I don’t know if that’s because this a small town, but it felt personal.”
For others, such as McCollum, there’s a kind of lingering guilt.
McCollum lived across from the playground where the killer, maintenance man Ryan Brunn, lured Rivera with a picture of her missing skate to an abandoned apartment where he sexually molested and killed her, cutting her throat and bludgeoning her with the skate. The apartment is directly below McCollum’s. He was home at the time and heard nothing.
He said Friday all the press and comments from him and other townspeople have distorted the outside world’s view of the city. “We haven’t had these kinds of problems in Canton before,” said McCollum. “It’s a safe town, and it’s still a safe town. I just want something positive about the city.”
At the Soul Food Market on Main Street, across from the Canton Theater where the featured play this week is “A Murder Is Announced,” manager Diane Oberkrom said the Rivera killing and the grief and career wreckage and death that has followed it are just about the only thing customers have talked about since early December.
“Of course, they have all kinds of opinions of what happened and what went wrong,” she said. “It’s been devastating. People feel terrible, even for the family of the killer.” She said people have been keeping closer watch on their children, but the town doesn’t feel any less safe.
“I still see people out jogging after dark and people walking their dogs and families with strollers,” she said.
The new chief, Todd VandeZande, said Friday the events have been the “equivalent of a tsunami. Everything is fine and, before you know it, you’re inundated with more than you can handle, and before you know it, it’s gone.”
The department already has started incorporating some of the recommendations from the report, said VandeZande, but it will take time to recover from the damage.
“It takes a toll on you psychologically,” he said.
City manager Wood said he thinks Canton will recover soon enough and has already started “healing” from what he called the “negative reverberating dynamics” of the Rivera killing over the last seven weeks. But it’s not something the town is about to forget.
“How could it?” he said.
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