Hermanio Joseph, a Haitian migrant convicted of vehicular homicide in the 2023 death of 11-year-old Aiden Clark in Springfield, OH (Clark County Sheriff’s Office)
1,209 words
“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man.”
Those rancid words slithered out of Nathan Clark’s lips last Tuesday evening as he spoke at a City Commission Meeting in Springfield, OH. The stubby-looking father of a recently deceased son expressed this foul sentiment barely an hour before Donald Trump put Springfield on the map with his debate comments about Haitian migrants “eating the pets of people that live there.”
While the nation has been engulfed in controversy for more than a week about whether wild-eyed and purple-gummed migrants are chowing down on people’s pets in Springfield, OH, this ghastly statement by a white Springfield resident whose 11-year-old son was killed by an unlicensed Haitian driver has escaped notice.
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Backstory: On August 22, 2023, a 35-year-old Haitian named Hermanio Joseph—later claiming that he lost control of his minivan when the morning sun blinded him—careened over the center line on a road in Springfield, Ohio. Joseph’s van collided with a bus that was transporting 52 students to class on the first day of school. The bus overturned, ejecting and killing Aiden Clark. At least 23 other students were injured. When Ohio Highway Patrol officers asked Joseph for ID at the crime scene, he produced a Mexican driver’s license.
That highway divider wasn’t the first line Hermanio Joseph had crossed illegally. In August of 2022, he snuck across the border from Mexico to the US. Federal authorities captured him, but then magically released him. He appears to be one of 300,000—yup, THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND—Haitians the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status to help shelter these sweet black butterflies from being caught in a federal dragnet and cruelly returned to the flaming cesspit whence they fled.
Back in May when Joseph was sentenced to a minimum of nine years in prison for vehicular homicide, Aiden Clark’s father told the courtroom he didn’t want his son’s death to be exploited by the racist creeps who traffic in “hate”:
Because of Mr. Joseph, our hearts will always be incomplete…. In capital letters and bold print, we do not want our son’s name to be associated with hate that’s being spewed by the uninformed majority that vocalized their hate.
Last Tuesday, Clark uttered the word “hate” six more times during his three-minute ethnomasochistic spiel in Springfield:
You know, I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt.
Well, “blunt” is one way to put it. “Appalling” is another. So is “sickening.” But why does the white man have to be 60? It only proves that boomers are America’s most persecuted minority.
But if that [60-year-old white] guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone. The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces. …
I’d imagine your son’s death was far more violent than anything being said about it. Then again, I ain’t the Haitian driver who killed him.
They make it seem as though our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate. That we should follow their hate…. Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose. And speaking of morally bankrupt, politicians Bernie Moreno, Chip Roy, J. D. Vance, and Donald Trump, they have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain.
At the risk of sounding rude, I hadn’t heard of your son until you used him as a political tool.
They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis, and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. …
They don’t need your permission to mention him.
To clear the air, my son Aiden Clark was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti…. But don’t spin this towards hate. In order to live like Aiden, you need to accept everyone. Choose to shine, make the difference, lead the way, and be the inspiration.
“Choose to shine?” A shine killed your son, and apart from a handful of politicians, Americans had zero choice in letting him into the country.
Did you know that [Aiden] researched different cultures to better appreciate and understand people that he interacted with? Did you know that one of the worst feelings in the world is to not be able to protect your child? Even worse, we can’t even protect his memory when he’s gone. Please stop the hate.
It’s too late to protect your son, but if either one of you had “researched” Haitian culture, you might have taken protective measures. And if government officials had stopped the massive influx of Haitians, you wouldn’t need to “stop the hate.”
Nathan Clark isn’t the first white parent to use his child’s corpse like a soapbox to stand on and rail against “hate.”
In 2022, moments after two black teens shot and killed a white high-school football star named Elijah Dewitt in a Georgia parking lot, Dewitt’s girlfriend and both of his parents said they forgave the killers. Dewitt’s dad Craig told reporters:
Forgiveness is for the forgiver. We don’t want the hate in this household.
In 2018, after an illegal immigrant from Mexico abducted and stabbed 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts to death in Iowa, her father Rob attacked Donald Trump for mentioning the situation, calling him “heartless” and “despicable.” Rob Tibbetts also had harsh words for people who “appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist.” He spoke much more glowingly of Mexicans:
The Hispanic community are Iowans. They have the same values as Iowans. As far as I’m concerned, they’re Iowans with better food.
Still, his daughter will never be able to eat another taco.
Amy Biehl was a white Stanford graduate who flew to South Africa on a quixotic mission to assist the natives in their battle against apartheid. In August 1993, a mob of blacks dragged her out of her car, stabbing and stoning her to death while chanting anti-white slurs. Three of her murderers reportedly “burst out laughing in the public gallery of the Supreme Court…when a witness told how the battered woman groaned in pain.”
In 1998, when all four of Amy’s murderers were released due to their statements that the killing had been “politically motivated,” her father shook their hands and declared:
The most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue…we are here to reconcile a human life [that] was taken without an opportunity for dialogue. When we are finished with this process, we must move forward with linked arms.
Why does “moving forward” always seem like “falling downward”? Has all this “hate” skewed my equilibrium?
Whether Haitian interlopers are killing and eating house pets in Springfield, OH doesn’t seem like the biggest problem here. They are killing children, though. At least they haven’t eaten any white children yet. But even if they did, I’m not sure their parents would mind.