SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – A stunned and saddened Governor Gary Herbert is offering his and the state's condolences after the loss of the Powell children.
This was not a governor or a politician we talked with Monday.
It was a husband, a father and a human being.
His answers came from a very personal place.
Herbert spent Monday talking to children in the capitol rotunda and about children a state mourns for.
The governor told ABC 4,
"It's a tragedy of just stunning proportion."
The governor calls children the innocent people in our society - those to whom we owe the best.
Perhaps, that is why this tragedy is so hard for him to accept,
As he put it,
"It's hard to even react. Its so mind numbing. It's almost incomprehensible. I know the facts and
I still have a hard time believing it."
The governor's heart aches most for Charlie and Braden Powell.
It's them he thinks of when he says:
"Let's take care of each other. Let's love each other. Let's find better ways to improve our communities and families. Let's love our children."
As for Josh Powell, the governor tried to show compassion but it wasn't easy.
Herbert said,
"My mind is so numb; I don't really have many good things to think about Josh. I'm lucky I'm not the one who has to make the judgment."
And later Monday, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff issued this statement:
"I have witnessed a lot of evil in my 12 years as attorney general, but Josh Powell murdering his two little boys is the most fiendish act yet. I remember meeting Chuck Cox when he joined me at the capitol to fight for missing and abducted children. He still had hope his daughter might be alive and now this coward has taken his two grandchildren whom he obviously deeply loved. My sympathy goes out to the Cox family and other families and friends who have lost so much. Josh Powell's malevolence is a reminder that our legal/criminal system can sometimes be inadequate. Hope lies in family, faith and community. These senseless killings strengthen my resolve to do more to protect all, and especially our vulnerable little ones."
