Fatal Death Over Some Sneakers

    A 14-year-old boy was found dead by his father in his Atlanta apartment mid October of 2014. The victim, Paul Sampleton, was a high school freshman who was shot dead during an armed robbery. It all took place over the sale of sneakers, specifically the Air Jordan XI. Typically how the “sneaker game” goes is sneakerheads (the term sneakerhead refers to an individual who is a sneaker fanatic) purchase limited, exclusive, or open to the general public sneakers. Then its up to the individual to keep the shoes as a collectable item or sale them twices as much as retail for profit. The pokemon slogan, gotta catch’em all, applies to sneakerheads as well.

As for the AIr Jordan XI, there what you call iconic sneakers from an iconic basketball player, Michael Jordan who is known nation and if not worldwide. When Nike set the date for the XI Concords to release it resulted into complete chaos. Retail shoe stores across the nation experienced massive dilemmas. From dealing with a needy massive crowd to personally dealing with the customers who didn’t get a hold of some sneakers. But for Sampleton was different. He played the role as a middleman, a third party sneaker retail seeking higher profits for his shoes. The investigation demonstrated that Paul posted on a Facebook page to find possible buyers. After a plethora of offers, Paul finally found a consumer. Unfortunately Paul was the one ending up paying, but with his life. The robbers somewhat strategically planned this robbery. Paul and the buyer set up a meetup date and place. The robber and his group planned to fake a robbery, with bare arms. One of them played the role as a criminal while the other one, attempting to buy the shoes, acts like he's in shock while being robbed. While the incident took place, everything was going according to plan until Paul refused to sell the shoe. Long story short, the criminals were fed up with Paul's time consuming excuses on why he won't sell the shoes that they just thought killing him would be a easier and faster way to obtain the sneakers. To this day the criminals are  unidentified and haven't been trailed. As for the family of Paul, there are grieving and wanting justice to be served. Local police stations sort of intervened in this situation and offered the police station to be a new meetup ground for sneakerheads during the exchange.

But we're not looking at the situation at a societal level. The media has promoted these iconic shoes Air Jordans to be a necessity for every individual in America. While some have fell into the trap of purchasing these sneakers, others have already realized that buying overpriced cheap material shoes is just not the way to go. The promotion of the shoes results into individuals desiring to get there hands on a pair and for this case it was by any means necessary. So far the media has done an excellent job promoting these shoes. Individuals still purchase them. Sneakerheads are being mind controlled, programed to worry about the next release date instead of worrying about bigger problems that our world is currently in countering. The  sneakerheads discourse is one of the many mind controlling scams, leading individuals into purchasing a cheap to manufacturer sneak at a high price while others like CEO's, investors, and other contributors except for the cheap labor manufacturers receive a good amount of profit. While consumers keep increase profits, this trend is no where near to an end. Now we can't change a culture that has been around for almost half a decade, but what we can do is raise awareness of how the sneakers are produced in sweatshops in third world countries and how each pair is made by a worker who's been through modern day slavery. And especially raise awareness on how the profits are distributed. Overall individuals, such as sneakerheads, shouldn't worry about the next release date or the upcoming Air Jordan shoe. Instead they should worry about current community turmoils or if not nation or worldwide. But mainly what they should focus on is bettering themselves positively as human beings.