> Could this murder have been a gang initiation activity for these “youth”? <
She probably just didn’t give up her cell phone and her money fast enough.
Side story: A few years ago I watched a TV show where they were interviewing convicted murderers. One murderer killed a convenience store clerk.
The murderer actually thought of himself as a victim! It was all the clerk’s fault, said the murderer. The clerk would be alive today if he had just opened up the cash register faster.
That’s the kind of sick, twisted mentality we’re dealing with here.
Yes, I have read similar accounts of the “robber (criminal) as victim” mentality in the past. It generally runs along the lines of:
“The (thing of value) that you have is actually mine and my demand for it is actually just me asserting my ownership of it. If you “resist” turning it over, then you compel me to take it by force and deserve whatever happens to you.”
To me, almost all criminal acts are a form of selfishness: at the very moment of the crime, nothing, but nothing, matters more (to the criminal) than getting their own way. Getting their own way, in and of itself, justifies the goal (criminal act) and every action required to accomplish it.