I never actually met Aryeh Isaac Wolf. But he’ll forever be frozen in my mind through the photos I’ve seen of him in the media — plucking away at a harp (and looking rather angelic), smiling like a proud, handsome young dad with his pretty wife and adorable baby girl, or wearing a silly floppy hat at a camp where he worked as a counselor.
In other words, just a typical young guy, living his life and enjoying himself.
But cruelly, that life was ripped away from Aryeh, and it’s one of those things in this world that just will never make any sense. The idea that his daughter Zahava will never get to know him — except through photos and fond memories from family members and friends — is almost too unbearable to contemplate.
A year ago, on Aug. 10, 2022, Aryeh — a 25-year-old construction worker who grew up in Northwest Baltimore’s Orthodox community and graduated from Talmudical Academy in 2015 — was working in Southeast Washington, D.C., installing solar panels at an apartment complex. From all reports, he was a kind-hearted, hardworking guy with everything to live for.
According to witnesses, a young man suddenly — inexplicably — walked up to Aryeh and fired five gunshots at close range. The shooter ran away by foot; Aryeh was transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead after all lifesaving measures were exhausted.
Like many people in the local community, I was deeply saddened and profoundly shocked by this random act of violence, with no apparent motive. But I was also confident that with the assistance of eyewitnesses and video surveillance, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department officers would apprehend Avery Miler, the 27-year-old suspect, fairly quickly.
About six weeks after the murder, they came close to nabbing Miler, who was running with a $60,000 reward bounty on his head. Someone spotted him in Northeastern D.C., where he reportedly fired at officers responding to the tip. A SWAT team even assisted the cops in cordoning off the area where the gunfire exchange took place, but somehow Miler was able to flee the scene.
For days and weeks, I kept typing in the names Aryeh Wolf and Avery Miler, scanning the news websites and quite certain the D.C. cops would soon get their man. The weeks turned into months, and at some point I came to the realization that justice might never be delivered in this case, possibly due to the overwhelming backlog of homicides in the nation’s capital.
But last week, almost a year to the day of Aryeh’s senseless death, the D.C. police announced that they discovered the skeletal remains of Miler in April — at a park a mile away from where the murder took place — and had confirmed his identity. A cause of death for Miler is pending.
Initially, I felt a sense of relief, that this scumbag — sorry, alleged scumbag — got what he deserved. He spent the final months of his life on the lam, desperately terrified that he would be thrown into the slammer for the rest of his miserable existence.
But that relief quickly dissipated, and I felt pangs of despair. After all, this suspect did not fully suffer the consequences of all the pain and anguish he wreaked upon those who knew and loved Aryeh. He didn’t have to step into a courtroom and gaze into the eyes of Aryeh’s wife and family, and hear about the wonderful, community-minded person he murdered for no apparent reason.
He didn’t have to stand before a jury of his peers and face the music from society, and he didn’t have to spend the rest of his life behind bars or on Death Row. We’ll likely never know why he — allegedly — committed this despicable act.
But I also thought of all the other families in America — of all backgrounds and regions and faiths — who lose loved ones to gun violence every single day and never get a sense of justice, if that’s even possible in such a scenario. Over the years, I’ve interviewed plenty of family members whose loved ones were cut down in the prime of their lives. That void is always there, and a true sense of justice and closure is forever elusive.
But in a society brimming with headlines of daily acts of street violence, relentless crime and mass shootings, we’ve become sadly accustomed –- comfortably numb, to reference a classic Pink Floyd song — to this unbearable way of life. Hearing about someone getting murdered is merely a blip on the screen for us these days. We merely shake our heads and move on, like this is a normal way of living.
With the discovery of Avery Miler’s remains, the murder case of Aryeh Isaac Wolf is now officially closed, I guess. But was justice ever really served? Could it ever be? And how do we prevent ourselves from becoming even more “comfortably numb” when it comes to the rampant and insane gun violence in our midst?
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