| Jacquielynn Floyd: Family has faith amid vile crime 01/09/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News The model citizens who went cruising last week for heads to bash could hardly have found an easier victim than Burke Jensen.
What luck – a Mormon missionary! A polite, clean-cut kid in a tie and white shirt, open and trusting and kind, walking to a meeting to talk God and gospel with a new convert.
Given the chance, Burke, 20, would certainly have handed over his wallet. The robbers were armed, after all, and he never has more than a few dollars, anyway. But they attacked first, then cleaned out his pockets while he was lying unconscious on the ground.
Robbery seemed to be almost an afterthought to what police called a "full, roundhouse swing" to the side of his head with a baseball bat. It almost killed him.
The attackers ran down Burke's friend and fellow missionary and hit him, too, but he was lucky. The blow bounced off his back, leaving a bad bruise but no serious damage. The thugs sped away, maybe to cap off the evening by torching some churches or shooting at priests.
Chilling phone call
The phone rang back home in Orem, Utah, and a Baylor hospital trauma nurse told Jack Jensen his son had been mugged.
"She said: 'Get here as quick as you can. His survival is in question,'" Mr. Jensen said.
Just like that, you're out shopping for groceries and you walk into your own kitchen and somebody's on the phone from far-off Dallas, telling you your boy's survival is in question. The Jensens spent a sleepless night, praying and waiting for the next plane to Texas.
Burke's rapid improvement has surprised everyone. He's conscious and appears to understand what people are saying. He can't use his broken right arm, so he pokes his left hand over the rail of his hospital bed for a shake.
He can't talk, though – this thoughtful, studious young man who speaks fluent Spanish – and doctors really can't tell yet how much memory he has lost or whether he'll have permanent brain damage. His deeply religious family has quiet faith that Burke's recovery will be complete, and – astoundingly – that he'll be able to complete his two-year missionary assignment in Dallas.
A belief in goodness
You could forgive the Jensens for wanting their son out of Dallas for good, but Mr. Jensen is firm in his conviction that most people are decent, that his son just had the bad luck to run into some of the few who aren't.
But I could tell the family has been shocked by the mindless violence of the attack, and by the Dallas detectives' apologetic explanation that this kind of crime isn't particularly out of the ordinary.
"In the county where we live, we had one murder in all of 2000," Mr. Jensen said. "It's pretty quiet."
The attack on Burke has been big news in Utah, where a large percentage of the population are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – Mormons – whose own sons and daughters commonly devote two years as young adults to missionary service. Here, it was barely a blip.
"I'm not angry," said Debbie Paquette, Burke's sister. "I'm disturbed that things are so violent and out of control."
The Jensens had nothing but praise and gratitude for the help and support they've gotten in the last week from local church volunteers, both Mormon and non-Mormon, and from the Baylor medical staff, and from the Dallas police, who are still looking for Burke's attackers.
But, talking to this kind, religious, closely knit family, I was oddly embarrassed. I wanted to reassure them that Dallas isn't an evil and dangerous place.
I wanted them to know that I wish this hadn't happened. And I wish it hadn't happened here.
Jacquielynn Floyd can be reached at .
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