The scenario I detailed in class was based on a true story. It happened in the last century in a city back east. Baltimore, maybe. Brooklyn?

A single mother has kept her sick child at home for three days. The little boy has the flu with a fever and coughing and listlessness. She’s fed him soup and crackers, whatever he would swallow and could keep down. He seems a little better this morning, the fever has dropped, but is not well enough to go to school. She has no one she can call to watch her child, but her boss has warned her that if she fails to come in today, she will be fired. Maybe he’s had to cover for her and is desperate for time with his own family or maybe he’s being a heartless jerk. I don’t know about that.

Mom sleeps on the couch in their one-bedroom, third-floor walk-up apartment. It’s payday and the rent is due. She can’t afford to lose her job, so she tucks her son into bed, warns him to stay in his room. She’s left him water and juice and crackers—all she has in her kitchen until she’s paid and can get to the store. The child seems sleepy enough to stay put. She rests her hand on his forehead and tells him she loves him. “You be good.”

Mom goes to work. She will run home at lunch to check on her boy.

The boy wakes in the late morning and feels restless. He’s bored of most of his toys, of games and television and being in bed. His favorite toy is a black plastic gun. Maybe his absent father gave it to him.

You already see where this is going.

The boy plays a game of cops and robbers suggested by a violent show he’s seen at a friend’s house, He runs around the tiny apartment, knocks over a chair, then charges out into the hallway. He’s forbidden to play in the hall, but there’s no one there to stop him, and he’s only seven years old, or eight, or six. During the day, the building is mostly empty because people are at work and children are at school. His footsteps thud up and down the hall. He bangs on doors, shouts warnings as part of his game. An elderly person in the apartment down the hall hears the banging and footsteps and yelling and is frightened. They call the police.

The officer arrives, checks in with the alarmed resident, and discovers a door wide open to the hall. The officer announces themself as police, calls out to ask if anyone is home, considers possible issues—a break-in, a drug-user, theft, assault. Has a resident been injured? The officer enters the apartment, finds the room in disarray, advances to the open door of a bedroom, weapon drawn by now.

The little boy has hidden in the narrow space between his bed and the wall opposite the bedroom door. He is less frightened than excited by someone come to play. He rises from hiding, his gun in hand rises first from his hiding place, and points at the officer.

The officer shoots.

Now. Who is to blame for this tragedy? Name them all. The child, of course, for leaving the apartment and making all that racket in the hall; the mother for leaving him alone; her boss for putting her in this position of choosing between income and child; the neighbor for calling the police; the officer who kills the boy. Perhaps the person who gave a replica gun to a small child? The manufacturer of replica guns? How about the child’s friend who watched the cop show with him the week before? Did that child’s mother know they were watching that violent show?

Who is most responsible?

Who feels responsible?

Who will suffer afterward from guilt?

Who do you want to blame?

In real life, something like this happened more than once in America in the 1970-1990s. I used to spend an entire class period considering the who and why and how of this scenario. A cascade of failures led to the death of a little boy.

My students often wanted to skip responsibility and guilt and go straight to blame. “He was/She was/They were stupid,” some would insist. Some would laugh. I remind them that this is a “true” story, something that actually happened.

It is tempting to assign blame, to paw over a tragedy and look for the flaw, the mistake someone else made that we would not make ourselves. By blaming someone for their own suffering, by pointing to their error, we believe we are safe. We make the horror their own fault. We would never have allowed our child to play with a gun (replica toy guns are now required to have a red tip on the muzzle); we would never have left our child alone (and now that would be in violation of the law), not even if there was no food left but crackers and juice and rent was due and we had no one to ask for help, and our job was at risk; we would not have called the police about a kid playing in the hall, not even if we were old and frail and alone and hard of hearing; we would never have mistaken the toy for a real gun. This was all preventable. A stupid mistake. We would never have made these mistakes. None of this will happen to us, to our child, to our neighbor.

But things do happen. We are at times desperate, neglectful, mistaken, careless. Unlucky. What happens is often out of our control. We cannot anticipate every scenario. We suffer afterward because we look for whom to blame and find ourselves. Marriages rarely survive the death of a child. Police officers often leave their profession after such a shooting.

As a nation we are too eager to shoot.

All this not to excuse ICE, who murdered Good and Pretti and others I have lost count of by now. All this not to blame Good or Pretti, who did nothing necessitating summary execution. They each acted within the law and with decency and even compassion. There is nothing much different or smarter we would have done in their place.

We might think we would not have done this or that, because we want to lay blame on their mistake. We want to say to ourselves and maybe even to others: “Aha! They brought this on themselves!” That would mean it couldn’t happen to us. We are safe.

We don’t want to admit, not even to ourselves, that we’ve done worse, made other mistakes, failed in other ways and other times. We were saved because others did not fail. We were lucky. Those recently killed mostly died while acting within their rights.

Maybe they made a mistake we want to point to, but no one should die or be blamed for their own death because of a mistake. It was others who chose not to follow the rules of ordinary human decency, others who disrespected laws developed with the guidance of our Constitution, others too heartless to take responsibility.

We cannot keep blaming victims of violence.

There’s an obvious alternative. We can hold those who kill responsible for their actions.

We can blame ICE because they chose killing over other choices. We can hold them responsible.