An Enemy of Promise

Friends expected Navy Lieut. (J.G.) Alton Lee Grizzard, 24, to be an admiral one day. Last week he was shot four times: once in each leg, once in the abdomen and, finally, once in the head. Classmates worshipped Ensign Kerryn O’Neill, 21, an honors student and a track star at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. She was found not far from Grizzard, curled in a fetal position. She had been shot at close range in the back of the head. Like Grizzard and O’Neill, Ensign George P. Smith, 24, was a midshipman at Annapolis and was due to report for duty as an engineer aboard the U.S.S. Salt Lake City, a nuclear attack submarine. He shot himself in the right temple with a 9-mm Ruger handgun after apparently using the same weapon to kill Grizzard and O’Neill.

The heart can be an enemy of promise, undoing even the most disciplined of lives — as the elite community of sailors based in Coronado, California, found out last week. Smith and O’Neill had been fiances since her senior year at Annapolis. Two days before the murder, however, she broke off their engagement. Smith then sent a 13-page letter begging her to reconsider. They were seen arguing on Tuesday evening, just hours before the killing. She left that quarrel in tears. At about 1:45 a.m., Smith reached O’Neill’s sixth-floor apartment at the bachelor officers’ quarters. He found Grizzard visiting O’Neill, exchanged angry words and then opened fire. Within seconds, all three were dead.

What remains is a trail of suddenly hollow accomplishments: Smith chosen “best all around” by his high school class; Grizzard’s passing for 12 touchdowns in his last year at Annapolis; O’Neill’s 12 varsity letters. And what did O’Neill and Smith break up over? In the Los Angeles Times, Coronado police cited witnesses who said, “They had different ideas about their future.” Now there is no future.