Church Organist murdered Christmas Eve

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

Alan Greaves

There's something particularly callous about the fatal attack on Mr Alan Greaves. To assault and kill anyone innocently going about their business is appalling at any time. When it is a man simply walking to his church on Christmas Eve in order to provide the congregation with festive music it's depressing in the extreme. I hope Mr Greaves' family can find some comfort from their church community and that the attackers are brought swiftly to justice.

I've just read this, completely tragic, why on earth would anyone want to kill him?

Utterly utterly tragic.

This is on of those senseless acts that makes me tuen into my mother and mutter "What is the world coming to?"

Two people have been arrested. No idea obviously what's happened here but people involved in the work of the church are sometimes vulnerable either because people hate what they stand for or because doing Christ's work and being a light in the world can sometimes bring you in to contact with unstable, violent and desperate people. I very much doubt this was a totally random attack.

To suggest that this was a religious hate crime or that he was deliberately targeted for being a christian is not borne out by the reports available. It seems poor Mr Greaves was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and I doubt the thugs he met that night gave any thought to who he was or what he represented. To them he wasn't even a human being.

Well there's no way to know till the evidence is presented at trial but I thought that truly random violence was very rare indeed.

Makes little difference to his poor family anyway.

Sadly, truly random violence isn't that rare at all.

I agree with stookie. Remember the indian student Anuj Bidve gunned down in cold blood in Salford Boxing Day night 2011? When the person convicted of his killing was asked why he'd shot a complete stranger his reply... 'I honestly don't know'. All you need is someone with a personality disorder and a violent nature, a few drinks inside them, mates egging them on, and anything is possible. The victim's religion is neither here nor there.

horrific, tragic. Have police said anything about motive?